Saturday, March 06, 2010

Nazareth Item Columnist turned Pulitzer Prize Winner Dies at Age 85

The Anchorage Daily News reports on the death of John Strohmeyer (read the article here).

According to the article, Strohmeyer won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 for editorial writing featuring racial tensions in Bethlehem.  He was the editor of the Bethlehem Globe-Times for 28 years.  In 1987 he moved to Anchorage, Alaska to serve as the Atwood Chair of Journalism at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

His early life was quite remarkable. 

According to the article he was born on June 26, 1924 to a Lithuanian immigrant.  His father, a coal-miner, committed suicide after the mine he worked in was closed, when Strohmeyer was five.  He and his brother were placed in an orphanage.  Two years later, his mother returned taking the boys to Nazareth, PA where she settled with her new husband Louis Strohmeyer.

At age 16, Strohmeyer began his journalism career reporting for the Nazareth Item (digital versions available online through the Memorial Library of Nazareth and Vicinity).

He attended Moravian College and worked nights at the Globe-Times from 1941 to 1943, before joining the U.S. Navy.  After the war he graduated from Muhlenberg, then attended The Journalism School at Columbia University, in NYC.  He finished first in his class, won a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, and covered both the 1948 London Olympics and the Berlin Airlift.

In 1952, he won a Neiman Fellowship to Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and in 1956 returned to become editor of The Bethlehem Globe-Times.

Posted via email from Ross Nunamaker

1 comment:

LS-P said...

Thanks for the plug regarding the digital version of The Item now available on the Library webpage. Regards. Lynn Snodgrass-Pilla, Library Director