Loudon Wainwright, Jr.

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Loudon Snowden Wainwright, Jr. (November 16, 1924[1]-December 12, 1988) was an American writer. He was the father of folk singer Loudon Wainwright III, singer Sloan Wainwright and grandfather to Rufus Wainwright.[2]

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[edit] Education

Loudon Wainwright, Jr. graduated from St. Andrew's School, Middletown, Delaware in 1942[3], and attended and graduated from the University of North Carolina, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After college, Wainwright served in the U.S. Marine Corps.

[edit] Career

Wainwright joined the staff of Life magazine and worked in a variety of positions over the years. In 1964 he began writing "The View From Here", a regular column in the magazine which appeared until the magazine ceased weekly publication in 1972. From 1969 on he also served as assistant managing editor.[4]

When Life resumed publication as a monthly in 1978, he joined its staff as an editor, and continued to contribute to its pages after retiring from that position in 1985. After his death, the magazine published a retrospective in the February 1989 issue with excerpts from some of the two hundred columns he had written for it over the years.[5]


Wainwright was also the author of The Great American Magazine: An Inside History of Life, an informal history of the magazine.[6]

[edit] Death

Wainwright died of colon cancer on December 12, 1988 at age 64.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Social Security Death Index [1]
  2. ^ family tree on Sloan Wainwright's web site
  3. ^ 1942 Criss Cross, p. 20, St. Andrews School Publications
  4. ^ Contemporary Authors vol. 127 (1989), Trosky, Susan M., ed, Gale Research Inc., p. 470
  5. ^ "Books of the Times", New York Times, December 11, 1986, Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher, [2] accessed 26 Sept. 2006
  6. ^ ibid.