Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, lecturer, and educator Leland Stowe was born in Southbury, Connecticut, on November 10, 1899. He received his A.B. degree from Wesleyan University, Connecticut, in 1921. He began his long career in mass communications in 1921 as a reporter on the Worcester (MA) Telegram, transferring to the New York Herald in 1922. As a staff reporter for the Telegram, Stowe was assigned to do a feature story on a woman dentist. Dr. Ruth F. Bernot. He persuaded the publicity-shy dentist to give him the interview he needed for his story. On September 27, 1924, Dr. Bernot became his wife. The Stowes became the parents of Bruce B. and Alan.
In 1926 Stowe became Paris correspondent for the New York Herald. Although stationed in Paris, he also had assignments for that newspaper all over Europe. For his reporting on the 1929 Reparations Conference in Paris, Stowe won the 1930 Pulitzer Prize. From 1936 to 1939 he served as a roving correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in South America and he also covered national U.S. politics.
In 1939 when World War II began, Stowe's editor at the Herald Tribune felt that he was too old to adequately cover the war from the front. Consequently the thirty-nine-year-old reporter transferred to the Chicago Daily News; and from 1939 to 1943 he covered the war for that newspaper, sending reports from every major front--Finland, Norway, the Balkans, Greece, China, Indian Burma, and Russia. During his four years overseas during World War II, Stowe reported from 44 countries and served with the armies and air forces of seven nations. From 1944 to 1945 he was a commentator and war correspondent for the American Broadcasting Company. Stowe's pre-war and wartime experiences became the subject of four books: Nazi Means War (1933), No Other Road to Freedom (1941), They Shall Not Sleep (1944), and While Time Remains (1946). (He later published Target: You [1949], Conquest by Terror [1952], Crusoe of Lonesome Lake [1957] and The Last Great Frontiersman [1982].
After the war Stowe worked as a freelance writer for various magazines including Harper's, Look,Reader's Digest, The Nation, This Week, and Esquire. He also continued to give public lectures as he had since 1934. In 1947 he broadcast on the Mutual Broadcasting Network, where he was sponsored by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union. This was the first occasion in which a labor union was the sponsor of a radio program. In 1950 Stowe briefly served as foreign editor of The Reporter, but resigned because of conflict with the magazine's editorial policy. From 1952 to 1954 Stowe directed the News and Information Service of Radio Free Europe in Munich, Germany. In 1954 he also took charge of research coordination for RFE.
Shortly after divorcing his first wife, on June 17, 1952 Stowe married Theodora Calaus (1912-1994), formerly of Bucharest and Budapest, whom he had met while a war correspondent in 1940.
In 1955 Stowe began what he later termed the ideal double life, combining a half year of teaching at the University of Michigan and half a year as a roving staff writer for the Reader's Digest. His annual research assignments subsequently took him and Theodora to South America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Orient. At Michigan he pioneered a foreign assignment project in which his journalism students made an intensive on-campus study of another country. These projects involved interviews with foreign students and a lengthy report on their chosen country's problems and culture. Upon his retirement from teaching in 1969 the University of Michigan organized a Leland Stowe Day program in which many of his former students participated. Stowe retired from the Reader's Digest in 1976.
In addition to his Pulitzer Prize, other professional honors included an Overseas Press Club award for his coverage of the German seizure of Norway and medals from the University of Missouri's School of Journalism and from Sigma Delta Chi for his distinguished coverage of World War II. He also received two honorary degrees, one from Wesleyan University in 1944 and one from Hobart College in 1948. In 1945 he received an honorary M.A. from Harvard University. In 1930 he received the Legion of Honor of France and in 1945 he was decorated with the Greek Military Cross. Leland Stowe died on January 16, 1994.
