(Originally published by the Daily News on August 8, 2005.)  ABC News Anchorman Peter Jennings, the Canadian-born boy wonder who became one of America's most respected newsmen, died last night - four months after announcing he was battling lung cancer. He was 67.  Jennings died at his Manhattan home, his dream of beating the disease and returning to the anchor's desk ending as he was surrounded by his wife, Kayce Freed, and his family.  "Peter died with his family around him, without pain and in peace," his family said in a statement released last night. "He knew he had lived a good life."  ABC News President David Westin announced Jennings' death to his colleagues, saying, "None of us will be the same without him."  "For four decades, Peter has been our colleague, our friend and our leader in so many ways," Westin said in a statement.  Jennings broke the news April 5 on ABC's "World News Tonight" that he had been diagnosed, blaming the disease on a longtime cigarette habit, which he had kicked but started again after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.  "He knew that it was an uphill struggle," Westin said of Jennings, who was undergoing aggressive chemotherapy. "But he faced it with realism, courage and a firm hope that he would be one of the fortunate ones. In the end, he was not."  Jennings' ABC colleague Barbara Walters said she was stunned and saddened.  "We all knew how sick Peter was, but tonight when we heard the news I think it was heartbreaking for all of us," Walters said. "We had all prayed that he would make it. He just died much too young."  Veteran ABC newsman Ted Koppel said he had just visited Jennings at his Long Island home and that they joked that between them they had put in 83 years at ABC News.  "He was a warm and loving and surprisingly sentimental man," said Koppel.  Born and raised near Toronto, Jennings added dual U.S. citizenship in 2003. "Canada's ingrained in my soul, but this is my home," he told the Daily News.  Jennings became a newsman at the age of 9, hosting a boyhood radio show. He dropped out of high school to take a full-time radio reporting job.  In 1964, the poised and handsome reporter was hired by ABC News and sent to cover the Civil Rights movement in the South.  At the age of 27, Jennings was promoted to the anchor desk. But he struggled for two years and stepped down from the job because he felt he [was] unqualified.  Jennings became a foreign correspondent for ABC, building credibility by covering conflicts in the Middle East and other hot spots.  "He was a student for the rest of his life because he had dropped out [of high school] so early," Koppel recalled.  But Jennings was determined to overcome his lack of a formal education by becoming a voracious reader of books and a student of history.  "I have never spent a day in my adult life where I didn't learn something," Jennings once said in an interview with the Saturday Evening Post. "And if there is a born-again quality to me, that's it."  Jennings is survived by his wife, his two children, Elizabeth, 25, and Christopher, 23, and his sister, Sarah Jennings.
Longtime ABC News anchor announced his lung disease in April. Four months later, he dies at 67 years old surrounded by family.