Vermont C. Royster

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Vermont Connecticut Royster (born April 30, 1914 in Raleigh , North Carolina , United States ; † July 22, 1996 there ) was editor of The Wall Street Journal from 1958 to 1971 . He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work , along with numerous other awards .

origin

Named after his paternal grandfather, his idiosyncratic names are the result of a family tradition according to which the descendants were named after states , which gave the family an entry in the book series Ripley's Believe It or Not! brought in. In addition to the unusual name of his grandfather, his great uncles were Arkansas Delaware, Wisconsin Illinois, Oregon Minnesota and Iowa Michigan Royster, usually addressed by the first name, while the middle name only appeared as an initial. Royster's father ran the Royster Candy Company , a candy factory in Raleigh. The family is closely associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), where his grandfather taught Latin and Greek , while his great-uncle Wisconsin helped set up the medical school at UNC.

Career

After graduating from UNC in 1935, he got a job as a reporter with the New York City News Bureau , and a year later began his 61-year career with the Wall Street Journal. He started there as a reporter in 1936, was then from 1936 to 1940 and in 1945/46 a correspondent in Washington, DC , columnist from 1946 to 1948 and rose to editor between 1948 and 1971, which he did until 1971 also stayed. He resigned as editor and contributed until 1986 as a columnist and emeritus editor.

1940 Royster enlisted in the United States Navy Reserve . During the Second World War he served as the captain of a destroyer, the USS Jack Miller, in the Pacific . He achieved the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Navy. The Jack Miller was involved in several battles with the Japanese Navy and survived two typhoons unscathed. In late August 1945, Royster was among the first group of Americans to see Nagasaki after the second atomic bomb was dropped . After the war, he resumed his work for the Wall Street Journal .

In 1953 Royster received the Pulitzer Prize for Editorials . He was President of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1965 and 1966 . He retired from the Wall Street Journal in 1971 and began the weekly Thinking Things Over column , which he continued until age-related restrictions forced him to quit for good in 1986. He won his second Pulitzer Prize in 1984 in the commentary category . After retiring as editor, he became the Kenan Professor of Journalism and Public Relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill .

Honors

When he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, he said in the laudatory speech :

For over half a century, as a journalist, author, and teacher, Vermont Royster illuminated the political and economic life of our times. His common sense exploded the pretensions of "expert opinion", and his compelling eloquence warned of the evils of society loosed from its moorings in faith. The voice of the American people can be heard in his prose — honest, open, proud, and free.

Other awards and honors were (excerpt):

  • 1958 Distinguished Service Award, Sigma Delta Chi
  • 1971 William Allen White Award, University of Kansas
  • 1975 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism
  • 1976 Elijah Lovejoy Award
  • 1976 Honorary Doctor of Law, Colby College
  • 1980 North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame

Some of the editorials Royster wrote are now considered classics, including:

Every Thanksgiving year , The Desolate Wilderness and And the Fair Land are published, and every Christmas, In Hoc Anno Domini appears in the Wall Street Journal .

Private life

He married Frances Claypoole in 1937 and had two daughters, Eleanor and Sara. Royster died in Raleigh on July 22, 1996 at the age of 82. One of his cousins ​​was Kay Kyser , a well-known musician in the 1930s and 1940s.

bibliography

  • Royster, Vermont C .: Journey through the Soviet Union . Dow Jones, New York 1962, LCCN 62052268.
  • Royster, Vermont C .: A Pride of Prejudices . Knopf, New York 1967, LCCN 67022219.
  • Royster, Vermont C .: My own, My country's time: a journalist's journey . Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, NC 1983, LCCN 83232385.
  • Fuller, Edmund: The essential Royster: a Vermont Royster reader . Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, NC 1985, LCCN 85001302.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Royster, Vermont C.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Royster, Vermont Connecticut; Royster, Vermont
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist, columnist, author
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Raleigh , North Carolina
DATE OF DEATH July 22, 1996
Place of death Raleigh , North Carolina