- Richard L. Wilson (journalist)
Richard Lawson Wilson (
3 September 1905 –18 January 1981 ) was an American journalistWilson was born in
Galesburg, Illinois , and raised inNewton, Iowa . He was the son of Frank and Emily (McCord) Wilson, and was the youngest of nine children.He attended the
University of Iowa , atIowa City, Iowa . There he met and later married fellow journalist Katherine Y. Macy, a graduate of the University of Iowa and the Columbia University School of Journalism.After receiving his B.A. in 1926, he began his reporting career at
The Des Moines Register inDes Moines, Iowa . After a year at theSt. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1928, he returned to Des Moines as City Editor and then toWashington, D.C. , in 1933 to set up the Washington bureau of the Register, at that time owned by the Cowles family, who owned newspapers in the midwest and published the now-defunctLook magazine . He became chief of the Washington bureau for all Cowles publications in 1950, and occupied that post until his retirement in 1970. Wilson was elected President of the National Press Club for the year 1940. He was also very active in theGridiron Club .During
World War II , Wilson travelled extensively abroad as awar correspondent . In 1954, he was awarded thePulitzer Prize for National Reporting, " [f] or his exclusive publication of the FBI Report to the White House in the Harry Dexter White case before it was laid before the Senate by J. Edgar Hoover." [ [http://www.pulitzer.org/ The Pulitzer Prizes] ]Wilson retired from active newspaper reporting in 1970, and wrote a nationally-syndicated column until 1976. He died on
18 January 1981 , in Washington, D.C., of complications frommycosis fungoides , a non-Hodgkin’slymphoma . He is buried inRock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.He received Sigma Delta Chi's annual award for Washington reporting and was a member of the University of Iowa's Journalism-Mass Communications Hall of Fame. [ [http://www.uiowa.edu/~journal/alumni/halloffame.html University of Iowa Journalism-Masss Communications Hall of Fame] ]
Wilson and his wife had two children: Susan M. Wilson, who attended
Radcliffe College inCambridge, Massachusetts and married journalist A. Hallock (Hal) Seymour, son of Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Forrest Seymour. They had three children. Wilson's younger daughter, Katherine M. Wilson, attended Radcliffe College as well, and married attorney Maurice F. Lesses. They also had three children. Katherine M. Wilson died ofpneumonia inMinneapolis, Minnesota , on20 January 1989 ; she had been suffering fromAlzheimer's disease . She was buried next to her husband.Wilson's professional papers are at Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in
West Branch, Iowa . [ [http://www.ecommcode2.com/hoover/research/historicalmaterials/other/wilson_r.htm Richard L. Wilson Papers] ] He is among many people whose conversation was captured on President Nixon's "secret tapes." [ [http://www.millercenter.virginia.edu/scripps/diglibrary/prezrecordings/nixon/oval.html Nixon Presidential Tapes 459 and 467] ]References
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