Wayne LaVerne Corey, Jr., born January 1, 1943 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, passed away on Wednesday, February 19, 2025, at his home in Laguna Niguel, California. He was Tim to close friends and family. His parents were Wayne Sr. and Maxine, after whom his granddaughter is named. He had an older sister, Barbara (passed), and twin brother, James (Jim, passed). He is survived by his wife, Ky-Thang, his daughter Pamela and his son-in-law Cuong, his son Christopher, his grandchildren Holden and Maxine, and his niece Susan and his nephew Mark.

Wayne's extraordinary career as an acclaimed journalist and foreign correspondent began in his college years. At Michigan State University he worked for both the university and commercial radio stations. In 1965 he graduated with a BA in Television and Radio and a minor in Asian History. A year later he received an MA in Broadcast Journalism.

From 1967 to 1969 he served in the US Army. His service included a year in Vietnam, where he was a reporter for the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. That experience is likely one of the reasons why he was so fond of the film Good Morning Vietnam. Later he would have an actual encounter with Hollywood when he and other Vietnam veterans were consulted by Robert De Niro as part of his preparation for Deer Hunter.

After returning to the US, Wayne worked as a general assignments reporter at the Washington Evening Star, and joined the Voice of America (VOA) News Division in 1971. He worked in the newsroom until 1972, when he eagerly accepted his first international assignment: a seven-month temporary assignment in Vietnam and Japan. He became the VOA Bangkok Correspondent in 1973, transferred back to Saigon, Vietnam, in 1974, where he met and married his wife Nguyễn Thị Kỳ Thắng, and then returned to Bangkok after the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. He was one of the last Americans to be evacuated from Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), hours before communist forces invaded the city. Before leaving, he played an important role in securing the evacuation of Vietnamese VOA employees and their families. He was also one of the first foreign correspondents to report on the Khmer Rouge atrocities taking place in neighboring Cambodia in late 1975; his work was described as "a dogged pursuit of the facts" in the face of post-Vietnam War geopolitical sensitivities.

From 1978 to 1981, Wayne was the VOA Hong Kong Correspondent (during which time his daughter Pamela was born) and in 1981 he opened the VOA News Bureau in Beijing. He returned to Washington, D.C., in 1984, as the newsroom's Far East Desk Editor; it was during this time in D.C. that his son Christopher was born. Wayne later became a VOA Congressional Correspondent, and then the Pentagon Correspondent. In 1989 he and his family went overseas to Switzerland where he held the position of VOA Geneva Correspondent. In 1994 they moved to Austria, where Wayne was the VOA Vienna Correspondent, responsible for coverage of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Austria.

In 1996 he took early retirement, and the family settled in Laguna Niguel, California. Although he no longer traveled the world as he used to (either on lengthy and often dangerous reporting assignments, or on adventurous family road trips), he now had more time to spend with his family, and to enjoy the things that he had been hard-pressed to find time for during his demanding career. In particular, he loved classical music (he could listen to Mozart every day); detective series (one of his favorites was the Inspector Maigret series); and he had a surprising appreciation for silliness and slapstick humor, from Monty Python to the Pink Panther.

Services will be held Monday, March 10, 2025, 11:00 a.m. at El Toro Memorial Park, 25751 Trabuco Road, Lake Forest, California.