Journalist David Halberstam killed in car crash

Started by RebLem, April 23, 2007, 05:45:45 PM

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RebLem

Author David Halberstam killed in crash near Dumbarton Bridge

By Connie Skipitares
Mercury News
San Jose Mercury News
Article Launched:04/23/2007 03:48:59 PM PDT

Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist David Halberstam was killed in a three-car accident this morning in Menlo Park near the Dumbarton Bridge, the San Mateo County Coroner's Office announced.

Halberstam, author of several books, died at the scene after the car in which he was a front-seat passenger was broadsided by another vehicle. The coroner's office said he died of massive internal injuries. The driver of the car that Halberstam was in was attempting to make a left turn at the intersection of Bayfront Expressway and Willow Road when it was hit by an oncoming car.

The impact forced the two cars into a third car. The 73-year-old Halberstam, who [was] either leaving a speaking engagement or going to it, was wearing a seat belt, the coroner's office said.

Halberstam had spoken Saturday night at UC-Berkeley on "Turning Journalism into History."

Orville Schell, the dean of Berkeley's graduate school of journalism, said in an e-mail this afternoon that Halberstam was on his way to an interview for his next book, about the Korean War, at the time of the accident.

"I have spoken with David's wife in New York City, extended the condolences of the whole school and have offered to do everything that we can in this difficult time for her and their family," Schell said in his e-mail.

Schell said he told Halberstam's wife that he "had given a truly inspired talk here at Berkeley."

Schell said that after the Berkeley speech, he, his wife, Liu Baifang; "New Yorker" staff writer Mark Danner; and NPR documentarian Sandy Tolan, joined Halberstam at Chez Panisse, where the five closed down the restaurant discussing the similarities between the Vietnam War and the current quagmire in Iraq.

"No one wanted to leave," Schell recalled late this afternoon. `It was kind of like the last supper."

When asked how he felt about Halberstam's sudden death, Schell replied, `What can one say? The fragility of life sometimes just intrudes with a kind of savageness that we normally don't pay much attention to."

A first-year graduate student, Kevin Jones, was in the car with Halberstam and sustained a punctured lung in the accident and was taken to the Stanford Medical Center, Schell said.

Jones is believed to have been the driver.

Halberstam graduated from Harvard University, where he excelled as editor of the school newspaper, the Crimsom. But in a 1993 interview with the Mercury News, he admitted he didn't do nearly as well in the classroom.

"I was a terrible student," Halberstam said to former Mercury News columnist Murry Frymer. "Sometimes when I talk to students now, I ask, `Who here is in the bottom third of the class?' When they raise their hands, I say, `Well, you are being addressed by another one.'"

Halberstam began his journalism career at the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Miss., at a time when race was the major story in the South. His first employer was "the smallest daily in Mississippi" at the time, with a circulation of 4,000. He was a one-person reporting staff for an editor who didn't like the well-bred Jewish kid from Harvard, according to the column.

"But I was the most productive reporter he had ever had. Still, after I wrote a piece for the (now-defunct) Reporter magazine on the civil rights sit-ins in Yazoo City, instead of praise, I got fired. He told me, `It's time for you to go. Go spread your wings somewhere else.'"

Halberstam moved to the Nashville Tennessean and then the New York Times in 1960. Within three years, Halberstam was reporting on the Vietnam War. His reporting on the war angered President Kennedy, who asked the New York Times to transfer him to another bureau. Halberstam would win a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Vietnam.

Halberstam also covered Poland, where he was expelled after problems with censorship in the communist country. After six years at the Times, Halberstam said he felt stifled.

But he embarked as an equally distinguished career as an author. Halberstam wrote 15 bestsellers, including "The Best and the Brightest" on the Vietnam War, "Summer of `49" on the 1949 pennant race between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Box and his latest book, "The Education of a Coach" on New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick.

His next book "The Coldest Winter" was to be an account of a battle of the Korean War.

Halberstam lived in New York next a fire station. He wrote another bestseller, "Firehouse," on that local fire station, which lost 12 men in the Sept. 11, 2001 attack.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

San Mateo County Times reporter Michael Manekin contributed to this report. Contact Connie Skipitares at cskipitares@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5647
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_5733552

_________________
"Never drink and drive. You might spill it."--J. Eugene Baker, aka my late father.
"What America needs is quarter way houses for people who can't make it in halfway houses."--George Carlin
"An economist is someone who sees something work in practice and wonders if it will work in theory."--Ronald Reagan
"Guns don't kill people. Gun nuts do."--popular bumper sticker
"When evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve."--Jello Biafra
"Crescit sub pondere virtus."--Motto on McCann family crest.
"Don't drink and drive; you might spill it."--J. Eugene Baker, aka my late father.

Larry Rinkel

From the obit at MSNBC:

Recently, he drew parallels between the current U.S. war in Iraq and the past failure in Vietnam.

Speaking to a journalism conference last year in Tennessee, he said government criticism of news reporters in Iraq reminded him of the way he was treated while covering the war in Vietnam.

"The crueler the war gets, the crueler the attacks get on anybody who doesn't salute or play the game," he said. "And then one day, the people who are doing the attacking look around and they've used up their credibility."

There are certain people I can think of on another board who would do well to ponder those remarks. . . .

Iago

Quote from: Larry Rinkel on April 23, 2007, 06:21:15 PM
From the obit at MSNBC:

Recently, he drew parallels between the current U.S. war in Iraq and the past failure in Vietnam.

Speaking to a journalism conference last year in Tennessee, he said government criticism of news reporters in Iraq reminded him of the way he was treated while covering the war in Vietnam.

"The crueler the war gets, the crueler the attacks get on anybody who doesn't salute or play the game," he said. "And then one day, the people who are doing the attacking look around and they've used up their credibility."

There are certain people I can think of on another board who would do well to ponder those remarks. . . .


Larry,
  If you're talking about the the "beautiful" Corlyss, you have no chance. She makes both Lucretia Borgia and Ilse Koch look like left-wingers.
"Good", is NOT good enough, when "better" is expected

Larry Rinkel

Quote from: Iago on April 23, 2007, 10:14:44 PM
Larry,
  If you're talking about the the "beautiful" Corlyss, you have no chance. She makes both Lucretia Borgia and Ilse Koch look like left-wingers.

Iago,

She's a real honey, isn't she?  :D