Bill, a leading light of the first generation of space reporters, died of pneumonia last week at the age of 88. There's a good obit in the Washington Post. I met him at the Voyager 2 Neptune flyby, where I guess he was one of the oldest journos and I one of the youngest. We met because, at The Economist, his wife Judy was a stringer for us and became a good friend. Over the days of the encounter he showed me the ropes, introduced me around and so forth.
Bill was one of the people who made the lives those of us who now write about this stuff possible, by understanding that, after Sputnik, space and science in general needed to be covered and going out and covering it. He built the appetite that we now feed -- while at the same time teachiong us not to treat the whole enterprise just as an occasion for awe, but as a story to be covered as incisively as possible. For example, he played an important role in getting the lapses that led to the Apollo 1 fire properly reported and investigated. While space was far from the only thing he covered -- he was the Chicago Sun-Times's DC bureau chief and earned a place on Nixon's enemies list (to his delight), as well as breaking the details of David Stockman’s budget cuts in the early 1980s –- it was space that he really loved, and he spent a lot of time on it. When I was looking at old news photos for Mapping Mars it always gave me a kick to see Bill in JPL covering the Mariners or the Vikings, questioning Sagan or Bruce Murray or Larry Soderblom. I’d think about him when Isaac Jaffe, the Robert Guillaume character in Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night, used to reminisce about the Mercury program or read Tim Ferris to his bemused subordinates.
Meeting Bill out in Pasadena was a wonderful link to a (slightly) earlier age. Later, staying with him and Judy at Mouse Trap Farm, watching the humming birds at their feeder, was just wonderful.
Comments