Albert Lawrence Delugach (October 27, 1925 – January 4, 2015) was an American journalist. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 and the Gerald Loeb Award in 1984. He spent nearly 4 decades as a reporter. He spent the first half of his career working in Saint Louis, for ''

The Kansas City Star ''The Kansas City Star'' is a newspaper based in Kansas City, Missouri. Published since 1880, the paper is the recipient of eight Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Star'' is most notable for its influence on the career of President Harry S. Truman and a ...

,'' the '' St. Louis Globe-Democrat,'' and the ''

St. Louis Post-Dispatch The ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' is a major regional newspaper based in St. Louis, Missouri, serving the St. Louis metropolitan area. It is the largest daily newspaper in the metropolitan area by circulation, surpassing the ''Belleville News-De ...

''. Delugach spent the last 20-years of his career with the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

'', retiring in 1989. He died of

mesothelioma Mesothelioma is a type of cancer that develops from the thin layer of tissue that covers many of the internal organs (known as the mesothelium). The most common area affected is the lining of the lungs and chest wall. Less commonly the lining ...

in January 2015 in

Los Feliz, Los Angeles Los Feliz (, ; Spanish for "The Feliz amily, ) is a hillside neighborhood in the greater Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California, abutting Hollywood and encompassing part of the Santa Monica Mountains. The neighborhood is named after the Feli ...

. He was 89 years old.

Background and education

Delugach was born in

Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the seat of Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 U.S. census, Memphis is the second-mos ...

. In 1943, he left high school early, and enlisted in the Navy. After the war (

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

), he received his high school equivalency and then attended the

University of Missouri The University of Missouri (Mizzou, MU, or Missouri) is a public land-grant research university in Columbia, Missouri. It is Missouri's largest university and the flagship of the four-campus University of Missouri System. MU was founded in ...

, majoring in journalism.

Career

Delugach began his career at ''The Kansas City Star'' in 1951, eventually leaving to work for the ''St. Louis Globe-Democrat'', where he and fellow reporter Denny Walsh, won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for exposing corruption within a

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

labor union. After spending three years investigating the Local 562 Steamfitters union, their reports led to multiple federal indictments involving kickbacks in sales of insurance and the union's pension fund. However, a new publisher, G. Duncan Bauman, refused to publish one of the key stories, about the federal government refusing to prosecute the kickbacks. Delugach's partner, Walsh, unhappy with the move, quit after leaking the story to a reporter at ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', causing the Justice Department to reverse its position, and prosecute the offenders. Delugach left the ''Globe-Democrat'' and wrote for the ''St. Louis Post-Dispatch'' reporting on the oil boom, with William K. Want Jr., from Alaska. The 6-story series covered the oil companies, the decision to build the

Trans-Alaska Pipeline System The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS) is an oil transportation system spanning Alaska, including the trans-Alaska crude-oil pipeline, 11 pump stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, and the Valdez Marine Terminal. TAPS is one o ...

, an 800-mile pipeline, and the financial interests of Secretary of Interior (former governor of Alaska),

Wally Hickel Walter Joseph Hickel (August 18, 1919 – May 7, 2010) was an American businessman, real estate developer, and politician who served as the second governor of Alaska from 1966 to 1969 and 1990 to 1994 and as U.S. Secretary of the Interior from ...

. Their stories were entered into the Congressional record in December, 1969. Delugach left the ''Post-Dispatch'' after just 18 months and went to work for the ''Los Angeles Times''. In 1984, he shared the Gerald Loeb Award for Spot News, with Ronald Soble, for their coverage of the death of gold trader Alan D. Saxon. Delugach retired from the ''Los Angeles Times'', in 1989.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Delugach, Al 1925 births 2015 deaths American newspaper reporters and correspondents Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting winners Gerald Loeb Award winners for Spot News The Kansas City Star people St. Louis Globe-Democrat people St. Louis Post-Dispatch people Los Angeles Times people