John Eure recently received an e-mail from his brother, Rob, in Cairo, Egypt.

"My heart cries out for Kabul [Afghanistan] ridiculously," he wrote. "This is quite simply the love of my life but it may not make sense to return there."

Robert Campbell Eure never made it back to Kabul. He died Tuesday morning at his desk in Cairo of a heart attack at the age of 50, putting an end to a peripatetic journalism career that took him from Pulaski County to central Europe, Afghanistan and Egypt with stops in Roanoke, Richmond and Portland, Ore., along the way.

Eure started working at The Roanoke Times, then called The Roanoke Times & World News, as a reporter covering Pulaski County in 1983. From there, he moved to the Roanoke newsroom before heading to Richmond to cover the General Assembly for the Times and for the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk. An editor recruited him to The Oregonian in Portland in 1994, where he stayed until 1998, when he worked briefly for The Wall Street Journal.

A stint as a freelancer later led him to work with groups helping fledgling journalists in countries without a well-established tradition of a free press. His time overseas became his life's work, his brother said.

"He had found a job in which he felt he could make a real difference and he attacked it with a passion and a zeal that I could only admire," John Eure said.

Rob Eure left Virginia having earned the respect of many of the politicians he covered in Richmond.

Chip Woodrum, who represented Roanoke in the House of Representatives for 24 years, remembered Eure as "the essence of Roanoke guy."

"He was straight, gritty and no frills. Kind of like Roanoke," he said. "Once he started reporting a story, no one was going to get him off track."

"He was tough as nails, he always asked the hard questions but he always did his homework," said Richard Cranwell, a Roanoke County delegate from 1972 to 2002 who today serves as Virginia Democratic Party chairman. "You always knew when Rob was pursuing a story that the truth was going to prevail."

Eure took that toughness back to his newsroom, where he didn't hesitate to speak his mind, recalled Rich Martin, a former managing editor at The Roanoke Times. "That got him in hot water sometimes with people above him, but most of the time it didn't because people respected him," said Martin, now an associate professor of journalism at the University of Illinois.

Eure covered the Virginia General Assembly in the early 1990s, at a time when the balance of power in the state legislature was shifting from the Democrats to the Republicans. It wasn't immediately apparent then, Cranwell said, but the Republican ascendancy, which was to culminate in the 1999 General Assembly elections, was already under way. The Roanoke Valley still was represented by three veteran Democratic lawmakers, Woodrum, Cranwell and Vic Thomas, who became close sources for Eure.

"He broke stories because he knew how to develop sources. Sources trusted him," said Forrest "Frosty" Landon, who was then the executive editor at The Roanoke Times.

Besides his brother, Eure leaves behind his wife, Deane Eure, and a daughter, Addie, both of whom live in Portland.

He also is survived by his father, John Eure, a former managing editor at The Roanoke Times, and a sister, Ginger Weckstein, both of Roanoke.

His brother has been working with Egyptian authorities to have Rob Eure's body flown back to Roanoke, where he will be cremated. John Eure said the family will hold a memorial service soon, but no date has been set.