John Martin Mecklin (January 29, 1918 – October 29, 1971) was an American journalist and diplomat.

Biography

Born in

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

, Mecklin graduated from

Deerfield Academy Deerfield Academy is an elite coeducational preparatory school in Deerfield, Massachusetts. Founded in 1797, it is one of the oldest secondary schools in the United States. It is a member of the Eight Schools Association, the Ten Schools Admis ...

, in

Deerfield, Massachusetts Deerfield is a town in Franklin County, Massachusetts, United States. Settled near the Connecticut River in the 17th century during the colonial era, the population was 5,090 as of the 2020 census. Deerfield is part of the Springfield, Massachu ...

in 1935. He then graduated from

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

in 1939. He was a war correspondent for the

Chicago Sun The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the '' Chicago ...

in 1944-1946 and wrote for the Rome Daily American in 1946 -1947 before returning to the United States to write for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''. He then went to ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

'' from 1948 to 1966 and was on the staff of '' Fortune'' from 1966 to 1968, when he was named to the magazine's Board of Editors. While on leave from ''Time'' in the early 1960s he served as the Public Affairs Advisor for the U.S. Mission to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development of the

United States Information Agency The United States Information Agency (USIA), which operated from 1953 to 1999, was a United States agency devoted to " public diplomacy". In 1999, prior to the reorganization of intelligence agencies by President George W. Bush, President Bil ...

in Paris, between 1961 and 1962. He then became the Public Affairs Officer at the

US Embassy, Saigon The United States Embassy in Saigon was first established in June 1952, and moved into a new building in 1967 and eventually closed in 1975. The embassy was the scene of a number of significant events of the Vietnam War, most notably the Viet Co ...

South Vietnam from 1962 to 1964. He died of cancer, in a hospital in Fairfield, Connecticut, on October 29, 1971, at the age of 53.'John Mecklin, a Fortune and Foreign Correspondent, 52,' The New York Times, October 31, 1971

Krulak Menenhall mission

References

Sources

The Papers of John Martin Mecklin
at Dartmouth College Library 1918 births 1971 deaths Writers from Pittsburgh Dartmouth College alumni Deerfield Academy alumni Journalists from Pennsylvania American male journalists American diplomats 20th-century American writers Deaths from cancer in Connecticut American people of the Vietnam War 20th-century American journalists 20th-century American male writers {{US-diplomat-stub