Will Lang Jr.
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William John Lang Jr. (1914–1968) was a journalist and a bureau head for Life magazine.
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[edit] Early career
Lang was born on the south side of Chicago on 7 October 1914. He went to the University of Illinois in 1936 where he wrote for the Chicago Daily News and "campus stories" for Time on a part-time basis. Six months later, he was summoned to New York to work for Time/Life on a regular basis. In both 1936 and 1940 he covered the Presidential campaign of James Farley. While in Washington D.C., Lang met an old classmate, Kay Meyer (who later became Katherine Graham) of The Washington Post and Newsweek. The two dated for a while, but broke off the relationship due to conflicting interests.
In December of 1940, Lang had an opportunity to get an interview with Massachusetts Congressman George Tinkham who showed Lang his trophies from his safaris in Kenya.
[edit] World War II
During World War II, he became Bureau Head in Algiers, Italy, Paris, and Berlin. He also became friends with Bill Mauldin, Ernie Pyle, George Silk, Guy Davenport, John Steinbeck and Robert Capa. During the war, he wrote many biographies, including , Gen. Lucian Truscott, Bill Mauldin, J. Elmer Spyglass, Col. Creighton Abrams, and Canadian manufacturer Ludger Dionne.
Lang was the first American reporter in Tunis after the Battle of the Kasserine Pass. Later that same year, he followed the battle campaign of General George S. Patton in Sicily. On 7 October 1943, Lang was nearly killed in the Naples post office explosion. Later that month, He was commended by Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway for his professionalism during his stay with the 82nd Airborne Division. After D-Day, he had lunch with Mary Welsh Hemingway, the 4th wife of Ernest Hemingway. Weeks later, he had lunch at a cafe' in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris with Dida Comacho, David Chim Seymour and Yale Joel.
Later on, he filed a report on The Battle of the Bulge alongside Col. Creighton Abrams, in which Abrams later mentioned in an article of Stars and Stripes.
[edit] Post-war
After the war, Lang continued his reporting in Europe and wrote reports on the rebuilding of Berlin and the fall of The Iron Curtain. After the birth of his daughter Luisa in January of 1948, Will Lang Jr. and his family nearly escaped the Berlin Blockade in June of that same year. In March 1950, one of his stories reported on the discovery of the corpses of German President Paul Von Hindenburg and his wife alongside Frederick William I of Prussia and Frederick the Great that were found in a salt mine in Germany.
When Lang returned home in May 1950, he became Bureau Head in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1952, he wrote about John F. Kennedy becoming Senator of Massachusetts. From 1954-1960, he served as Bureau Head in Washington, D.C.. After becoming Bureau Head in Paris in 1960, Lang was summoned to Spain to help his old friend Ernest Hemingway to publish The Dangerous Summer. Hemingway called it an addendum to Death in the Afternoon from 1938. Hemingway persuaded Lang to let him print the manuscript, along with a picture layout, before it came out in hardcover. Although not a word of it was on paper, Hemingway agreed to the proposal. The first part of story appeared in Life on 5 September 1960 and was followed by two more installments.
In 1961 while in Berlin, Lang witnessed the construction of the Berlin Wall. When he returned home in 1961, he was promoted to Deputy Regional Bureau Director of Life. In February 1963, he was promoted to Chief Bureau Head of Domestic and Foreign Departments for Washington, D.C.'s Life branch. On 26 June 1963, Lang returned to Berlin for a few days and witnessed John F. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.
In November 1963, Will Lang Jr. became one of the first individuals to view the Zapruder film after the assassination of President Kennedy. In January 1965, he was promoted to Chief Regional Bureau Director for Life in Manhattan. In May 1966, he spearheaded the first investigation of the Warren Commission's findings on the assassination. He asked Dallas Staff Chief Holland McCombs to mail any information on the investigation directly to him. However, McCombs backed down on his investigation when he learned that his friend and business associate Clay Shaw was involved in the Warren Commission investigation.
On 21 January 1968, Will Lang Jr. died instantly from a heart attack while on a skiing trip with his family in St. Anton, Austria. His body was taken to Salzburg where it was cremated. He was survived by his wife Louise, his only child Luisa, his father William Lang Sr., his step-mother Elsa, his brother Larry, and his sister Annette.
[edit] Quotes
- "The thing I most admire about Omar Bradley is his gentleness. He was never known to issue an order to anybody of any rank without saying 'Please' first." — Will Lang Jr. on Omar Bradley
- "He is the bravest man I ever met." — Ernie Pyle on Will Lang Jr.
- "Mr. Lang by reason of his professionalism, competence, genial personality and cheerful sharing of all dangers and hardships has come to be considered a member of the Division." — Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway, 82nd Airborne Division, on Will Lang Jr.
- "He was a professional. I spent more time with him than anyone else in the war. He was an immensely gentle man, deeply involved with people, not the hungry by-line type at all. He warmed the right seat of my jeep from Anzio through Southern France." — Bill Mauldin on Will Lang Jr.
- "Will was a marvelous fellow...charming, talented--an outstanding journalist." - Yale Joel, LIFE Magazine Photographer
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