Henry Clarence Cassidy was born May 12, 1910 in Boston. His family later moved to nearby Dedham, Massachusetts where he graduated from high school in 1927. He attended Harvard University, graduating cum laude in 1931 with a degree in Romance Languages. He obtained a job as a French teacher at a nearby prep school for the following autumn and left on a tour of Europe. When he returned, Cassidy learned that his father had resigned his position and landed Henry an apprenticeship through the newspaper publisher E. W. Preston. So began his career in journalism as a cub reporter for the Boston Traveler. In 1933 he started a thirteen-year stint working for the Associated Press, beginning in their New Haven office. The following year he transferred to the New York office where he worked on general assignments and then the Cable Desk. In June of 1936 Cassidy moved to the Paris office. He was the extra employee who filled in for the regular staff on their days off. When war broke out with Germany he was assigned to the front--first stationed with the French Army, then the British Army, and finally the British Royal Air Force. For his service during this time, he was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. Having returned to Paris, Cassidy reported on the capture and occupation of the city during the summer of 1940. One month later he traveled on a German troop train to Berlin where he spent two weeks, possibly being the last American reporter to cover Hitler and the Germans there during World War II. His next assignment took him to Moscow where he served as the AP Bureau Chief from 1940 to 1944. After returning home to the U.S. in 1944, Cassidy continued his work as a reporter for the AP at its world desk in Washington. In 1945 he returned to Paris in the position of Director of European News for NBC.
After five years Cassidy moved back to New York to become NBC's Director of Radio News, Special Events and Public Affairs. From 1952 to 1958 he returned to broadcasting as an anchor on such shows as World News Roundup, News of the World and Heart of the News. In 1959 Cassidy left NBC to become a consultant to the director at Radio Free Europe. At the same time he began writing for the Boston Herald and working for Broadcast Editorial Reports, Inc., an editorial service for radio and television formed in 1959 by Cassidy and a few fellow members of the Overseas Press Club (H. V. Kaltenborn, N. F. Allman, and others). In 1960 and 1961 he also worked for Syndicated Broadcast Features, Inc. based in Chicago. From 1965 until his retirement in 1980, Cassidy served as the foreign editor at the New York Daily News. Henry and his wife then moved to Stormville, New York, where he remained active by becoming the town historian for the nearby community of East Fishkill.
As Cassidy himself has noted, he was always a rather lucky person in his career and the great stories tended to break during his watch. Some of the big stories that he covered were the wedding and honeymoon of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the German occupation of Paris during World War II, and the German invasion of Russia. His story about the mobilization of Russia that he witnessed on his journey to Moscow during the invasion even impressed Stalin prompting Stalin to write Cassidy two letters in 1942 about the proposed “second front” of the Allies to divert the Germans from the Battle of Stalingrad (these letters are referenced in the collection but are not a part of the Cassidy Papers). Other important stories covered by Cassidy focused on the creation of the United Nations in 1945, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1952, and the 1955 Four Powers Conference in Geneva.
In addition to writing for the newspaper industry, Cassidy contributed articles to various journals throughout his career and had regular assignments for the Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of Moscow Dateline, 1941-1943 and The Rombout Patent: Including Biographical Information on the Two Original Purchasers, Francis Rombout and Gulian Verplanck. He also co-authored As We See Russia with fellow members of the Overseas Press Club. In 1956 Cassidy played a starring role as himself in the French film Au Revoir Mr. Grock, a biography of the world-famous Swiss clown.
Henry married Martha Stucklen in Needham, Massachusetts on December 2, 1933. They had one daughter, Constance, born January 23, 1938 in Paris, France. Henry Cassidy died from cancer on February 16, 1988 in New York.
