Australian-born Michelmore, who lived with wife Nan on Horne Took Road, worked as reporter, foreign correspondent, bureau chief, editor, free-lance magazine writer and author of five books in his journalistic career of 50- plus years.

After college in Adelaide he went to work as a reporter at the Adelaide daily The News. After only three years he was named foreign correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and served in Europe and the United States. In 1963 he was named assistant editor of the Sun newspaper in Sydney.

In 1966 he returned to the United States as New York bureau chief for the Morning Herald and other Fairfax publications. He and Nan moved into the first of four houses in the Closter area.

Peter's coverage of the widespread and intense opposition to the Vietnam War brought him into conflict with the conservative, hawkish Fairfax management. They ordered him home to Australia but Peter refused to go and resigned. He took up free-lancing for the Readers Digest, the New York Times Magazine, Family Circle and others.

Peter had known news tycoon Rupert Murdoch as a young man when he worked at the Adelaide News, owned by Murdoch's father. And in 1975 Murdoch named Peter New York bureau chief for Murdoch's News Corporation's publications. When Murdoch bought the New York Post, Michelmore was appointed metropolitan editor in 1977.

According to Nan, Peter was “a bit of a rebel, ready to stand up for his principles,” and in 1980 he and the arch-conservative Murdoch parted ways.

Peter went to work full time as roving editor for the Readers Digest where he ended his career writing about health, human dramas, adventure and notable people. He also wrote books about Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and the billionaire, Larry Mellon, who, inspired by the missionary Albert Schweitzer, left his gentleman's ranching career and founded and ran a hospital in Haiti.

His reporting career included high spots such as a combat stint in Vietnam, being in the press group following Robert Kennedy when he was assassinated in a Los Angeles hotel and moon landings. But Peter, a gentle, cheerful man with a dry sense of humor, was drawn to human interest. A favorite story was of an abandoned, crippled baby who was adopted by a husky member of a large motorcycle gang which ended up as the baby's loving family until she died at 16 of her ailments.

The Michelmore family moved to Snedens Landing in 1991. They rented for two years in what is now the Cohen house on Lawrence Lane, then bought the house on Horne Took Road.

Before the onset of his own cancer, Peter devoted himself tirelessly to care for Nan during a life-threatening, two-year-long illness which included major surgery.

Peter is survived by Nan, sons Jason, of Piermont, and Nick, of Palisades, daughter Tracy of San Francisco, CA, four grandchildren and three great grandchildren.