This episode opens with Jack Torry, author of "The Last One Out," a new book chronicling the life of Yates McDaniel, a daring reporter in World War II.
McDaniel was a foreign war correspondent for the Associated Press who took enormous risks to provide newspapers with accurate and riveting firsthand coverage of the war. He's considered the equal of legendary World War II correspondents Theodore White of Time Magazine, George Weller of The Chicago Daily News, Cecil Brown of CBS Radio, and Ernie Pyle of Scripps-Howard. The Associated Press boasted that during the war, McDaniel was the first “to arrive and last to leave.”
As a war correspondent, McDaniel was known all over the world. Yet when he died in Florida in 1983, "few outside his family paid much attention," Jack says. "At age 76, he seemed like just another white-haired retiree whose final years passed with little notice amid so many other senior citizens in Florida. The only hint of his fame came in a brief obituary buried on the inside pages of The New York Times."
In this interview, Jack talks about McDaniel's reluctance to write his memoirs or tell spellbinding stories, which is why he was forgotten by 1983 and why his name is rarely mentioned in the pantheon of war correspondents. In his book, Jack tells those spellbinding stories for him.
Published by Schiffer Military Publishing, "The Last One Out" is Jack's third book. He's a former Washington bureau chief for The Columbus Dispatch and Dayton Daily News, where he covered politics, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court. A journalism graduate of The Ohio State University, he's also the author of “Endless Summers: The Fall and Rise of the Cleveland Indians” (now the Cleveland Guardians) and “Henderson’s Light: Drinking, Driving and a Deadly Encounter.”
Kate and Jack have known each other since their Ohio State days, and they've kept in touch over the years. Jack lives in Leesburg, Va., with his wife, Saundra Torry, a former reporter for The Washington Post and a retired editorial writer for USA Today.
This episode also includes a short segment about reinventing oneself. In it, Kate interviews another longtime friend, Joy York, who embarked on her own reinvention and eventually realized her dream of becoming a writer. Like Jack in the previous interview, Joy is a published author.
Joy enjoyed a long and satisfying career in retail management, but she knew that the time had come to prioritize other parts of her life. So she took a big leap to spend more time at home with her family, do community service and pursue other interests including fulfilling her goal of becoming a published author.
Joy is the author of "Genuine Deceit: A Suspense Novel," her first adult fiction book, and the young adult novel "The Bloody Shoe Affair." You can learn more about these books on Joy's website.
This is Kate Jones. Thank you for listening to The Gale Hill Radio Hour!
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