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1 1 A GUBERNATORIAL PUSH a boyhood fascination with world war ii started my interest in world affairs that turned into a desire to become a foreign correspondent. It seemed to be an exciting world out there. So it proved to be. Before I became a foreign correspondent, however, my journalism got a push from a governor of Louisiana—an angry, not a friendly, push. In third grade in the Louisiana State University “lab school,” those youngsters who were doing well in various subjects were sometimes allowed to read quietly in a corner by open windows—this was before air conditioning. I was reading one morning when newsboys came by outside shouting, “Extra!” It was May 10, 1940, and Nazi Germany had invaded the Low Countries. That is my first recollection of the war, one day before my ninth birthday. By the time the United States entered the war following the Pearl Harbor attack a year and a half later, I was working after school four times a week down the street at my grandfather’s plant nursery. I was supposed to learn something about horticulture from the elderly German émigré who ran the nursery. With money thus earned, I subscribed to Life magazine for its graphic war coverage. In the sixth grade at Highland School, Miss Lillian Kennedy used the war as part of her social studies and geography material. Students were asked to report every morning on the latest news. I gradually became the main reporter, recounting to the class the American troop landings in North Africa in November 1942 and other developments. I was hooked on reporting the news. In a junior high school class that tried to focus students on what careers they might want to follow and how to prepare for them, I did my report on reporting . Work on my high school newspaper and yearbook seemed a logical part of becoming a journalist, although hardly useful preparation. The question was where to go to college. LSU had a good journalism school. Attending it would be the cheapest possibility, but the father of a friend urged me to go to his alma 2 The Dalai Lama’s Secret and Other Reporting Adventures mater, the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism, founded in 1908 as the world’s first journalism school and still one of the most respected in the United States. He was C. P. Liter, the top editor for both of the locally owned morning and evening newspapers. This was endorsed by a close friend of my mother since childhood, Margaret Dixon, although she was an LSU graduate. She had become the top reporter for one of these papers, the Morning Advocate. So, after a freshman year at LSU and spending the summer of 1949 bicycling and hitchhiking around Western Europe, I went in September to the University of Missouri, where my father had graduated. One of the courses that I took that sophomore year was “Recent U.S. History,” taught by Dr. Irvin G. Wyllie. Covering the half-century from the Spanish-American War through World War II, it was a requirement for all journalism students and widely popular with other students. After I had earned an “E” in the course, Missouri’s equivalent of an “A,” and let it be known that I was looking for student employment, Wyllie asked me to grade the class papers. Throughout my junior and senior years, I spent most Friday and Saturday evenings reading the longhand answers to tests that Wyllie gave every Friday to the 150 or so students who took his course each semester. Grading the papers made me well-known to my fellow journalism students, many of whom did not seem to appreciate that I was just doing a job to help pay for my education. Journalism school started off slowly. I soon realized that earning a Bachelor of Journalism required too many trade-type courses and not enough general education. I wanted a broad perspective with more history, economics, and other subjects. Early in that junior year, I decided to try to earn a Bachelor of Arts in history parallel with the BJ. This would require the equivalent of five years of college credits. At the end of my sophomore year in the spring of 1950—a month before the Korean War started—I had “pre-enrolled” to enter in the autumn the advanced program of the Reserve Officers Training Corps, following the example of three uncles who served...

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