Jessica Savitch, 35, an award-winning newswoman with the NBC network since 1977, drowned early yesterday after the car she was riding in plunged into the Delaware Canal in New Hope, Pa., about 35 miles northeast of Philadelphia. She lived in New York City.
The car was found upside down in about four feet of water early yesterday, a member of the Lambertville, N.J., rescue squad said. The body of the car's driver, Martin Fischbein, 34, a New York Post newspaper vice president, also was in the car. An NBC spokesman said the two were engaged.
Walter Everett, the chief of the New Hope police said that it had been raining and that visibility was very poor at the time of the accident. He said the couple apparently had eaten at a restaurant and were leaving the parking lot when the accident occurred. Everett said that there were no guardrails in the restaurant parking lot to keep a car from going into the canal, and that in 1977 a man died after driving into the canal after leaving the same restaurant.
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Bucks County coroner Thomas Rosko ruled late yesterday that both victims died of drowning.He said it appeared that Miss Savitch had made some attempt to get out of the Oldsmobile station wagon, but that Mr. Fischbein was found strapped into the driver's seat.
The overturned vehicle was spotted by a local couple who saw automobile wheels in the canal and called police, the chief said. Miss Savitch was in the back seat and Mr. Fischbein was strapped in a seat harnass at the wheel, Everett said. The chief said the incident is still under investigation.
While a number of women gained national reputations as television reporters or newscasters, Miss Savitch was the first to serve regularly as an anchor for a major national network. Her air of competence and cool command on the camera helped her achieve a salary of $500,000 a year at the age of 33.
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NBC News president Reuven Frank said she served as "an example for many young women looking for a career in television journalism, as a symbol of the gradual disappearance of the obstacles to women in broadcast journalism."
She held a variety of posts at NBC, including those of general assignment reporter, Senate correspondent, and principal writer-reporter for Saturday editions of "NBC Nightly News." She also had reported for "Prime Time Saturday," NBC News' weekly television magazine, and was a podium correspondent at the 1980 political conventions.
But she was perhaps best known for her most recent assignment delivering NBC's one-minute prime-time News Updates during the week. She also had been a substitute anchor on NBC's "Today" and "Tomorrow" shows, and was a member of the panel of reporters on "Meet the Press."
She also had anchored public television's "Frontline," a weekly documentary series begun in January.
Under her latest contract, which she signed last summer, Miss Savitch was to anchor "NBC News Digest," for which she was to have reported to work yesterday, and beginning in January, the Sunday editions of "Nightly News."
Her awards included an Emmy, a Columbia-Dupont Award, the National Women in Communications' Clarion Award, and the Commission on Working Women's Special Commissioner's Award for Excellence as a News Reporter.
Mr. Fischbein, 34, who lived in Woodmere, N.Y., had worked for the New York Post since 1978. Before that, he had spent seven years as an assistant to labor mediator Theodore Kheel, and had been an aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) when the senator was an aide in the Nixon White House.
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Miss Savitch was born on Feb. 1, 1948, at Kennett Square, Pa. Her father, a clothing store merchant, died when she was 12 years old. Her mother, who was a nurse, moved with her three daughters to Margate, N.J. Miss Savitch began her broadcast career with a radio station in Atlantic City at the age of 14, and later became a disc jockey for a rock show in Rochester, N.Y., where she was known as "Honeybee." She worked in Houston for KHOU-TV, then spent five years at the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia, KYW-TV, where she was a general assignment reporter and coanchor, before joining the network in 1977.
Miss Savitch, who had earned a degree in communications from Ithaca College, had been awarded an honorary doctorate by that institution. She also had served on its board of trustees.
Her autobiography, "Anchorwoman," was published in 1982.
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On Jan. 6, 1980, she married Mel Korn, a Philadelphia advertising executive. They were divorced 10 months later. In March 1981, she married Texas-born Dr. Donald Rollie Payne, 45, a Washington gynecologist and obstetrician and the recently divorced father of four sons. The couple moved into a fashionable town house near American University in Washington.
Early on Aug. 2, 1981, a few months after she suffered a miscarriage, Miss Savitch returned from New York to find her husband hanging unconscious in the basem*nt of their home. He died a short time later. His death was ruled a suicide.
