CHARLESTOWN — Joseph M. Ungaro, a leading newspaperman most noted for posing the question to President Richard Nixon about his underpayment of federal income taxes that led to Nixon’s memorable “I’m not a crook” reply, died Sunday night at South County Hospital. He was 76.

The cause of the death is not yet known.

Ungaro — who had a distinguished career in journalism spanning more than 40 years in Rhode Island, New York, and Michigan — settled in Charlestown following his retirement.

In Charlestown, where his family had vacationed for years, Ungaro became a prominent voice in local government. He became involved in the budget planning process, serving on and chairing the town’s budget commission for years. He also led efforts to pull out of the embattled Chariho Regional School District, and was on the town’s ad hoc school options committee at the time of his death, and most recently was tied on a write-in vote to an open seat on the Chariho School Committee.

“He had an incredible amount of energy,” said his son, Joe Ungaro Jr. And when he saw something that wasn’t right, his son said, he tried to fix it.

“When he retired, he said he wanted to do some fishing,” Ungaro said, so he went out and bought his father a fishing pole.

But the elder Ungaro got caught up in local issues and his urge to sit back and relax, along with that fishing pole, took a back seat.

“I just found it [Sunday],” his son said yesterday. “He hadn’t even put the reel on.”

The elder Ungaro also remained active in journalism, serving as the ombudsman for Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for military personnel deployed overseas. The work on a consolidation plan for the newspaper earned him the Medal for Outstanding Public Service from the Secretary of Defense, the department’s second-highest recognition to civilians.

Ungaro started his career in journalism as a copy boy for The Evening Bulletin, which later became The Providence Journal-Bulletin, before rising to the position of director of planning and development of the Journal-Bulletin in 1971 and president of the Providence Journal Co. shortly before he left the company in 1973.

It was while at The Evening Bulletin that he asked President Nixon at the annual convention of the Associated Press Managing Editors’ Association in 1973 whether he had underpaid federal income taxes in 1970 and 1971 and whether he thought elected officials should disclose their personal finances.

Leonard Levin, who worked as the metro news editor under Ungaro, said co-workers were not surprised when they watched on television as Ungaro questioned President Nixon.

“We were very amused,” Levin said. “We knew that if a tough question had to be asked, Joe was going to ask it.

“Any of us who knew Joe knew that he was not afraid to ask a tough question to the president of the United States,” Levin said.

Despite Ungaro’s accomplishments, Levin said, he was very “unassuming. He preferred to let his work define him.”

At The Evening Bulletin, Ungaro “brought about a lot of changes about coverage and layout.”

“He had an insight into where newspapers were going,” Levin said, noting Ungaro argued “that there was more to coverage than just politics and police. He wanted features and lifestyle and other types of stories about trends.”

“He always had an eye for the future,” Levin said.

“Joe Ungaro was a consummate newspaperman who never forgot the critical role of local news reporting,” James V. Wyman, who at the time worked as The Bulletin’s city editor, said in a prepared statement.

Wyman, who later went on to become executive editor and vice president of the company, credited Ungaro with enhancing and refining the role of the state staff and playing “a major role in helping to adapt new technologies to [The] Journal’s newsroom production functions.”

“Joe was on the pioneering end of things,” he said.

In that pioneering spirit, Ungaro was one of the early supporters of women in the newsroom, said Carol T. Young, now The Journal’s deputy executive editor.

“When I look back, I think he was the perfect first boss for a beginner because he was a good listener, he was very supportive, and he was very open-minded when it came to women in journalism,” Young said.

“He was a friend as well as a boss and he was an inspiration,” Young said.

After leaving The Evening Bulletin, Ungaro went on to work for Gannett Co., serving as vice president, president and publisher of its Westchester Rockland (N.Y.) newspapers until 1990, when he left to head the Detroit Newspaper Agency, which operated The Detroit News and The Free Press under a joint agreement. He retired in 1993.

Ungaro is survived by his wife, Evelyn Short; two daughters, Elizabeth Connallon of Cranston, and Ellen Ungaro of New York; a son, Joe Ungaro Jr., of Sparta, N.J.; four grandchildren; and a sister, Marie DeRita, of Providence.

Calling hours will be held Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m. and from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Avery-Storti Funeral Home, 88 Columbia St., Wakefield. A funeral Mass will be said Friday at 10 a.m. at St. James Chapel, 2079 Matunuck School Rd., Charlestown.