ERNIE PYLE - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 10/15/1936 - HFSID 102568

ERNIE PYLE
The war correspondent signs a letter on Hotel Carlton, Portland, Oregon letterhead TLS: "Ernie Pyle", 1p, 6x9. Portland, Oregon, 1936 October 15. On letterhead of the Hotel Carlton to Miss Randall. In full: "First, by way of reintroduction, let me recall myself to you as the roving Scripps-Howard reporter who came to see you last June seeking some attention from the medical world for the child, Kenneth White, of Wilmington, North Carolina. I thought you would be interested to know that I have just received a second letter (through the usual process of many forwardings) from Dr. Davison at Duke, in which he tells me that the child has been admitted to Duke Hospital for study. Dr. Davison says that externally the boy 'is worse than any child any of us have ever seen. We plan to continue the studies, but because of the advanced stage of his condition, I am not very hopeful that anything can be don. However, we shall do our best.' So at least the case has the attention of competent and sincere doctors. I am deeply grateful. And I am grateful to you, not only for your advice which resulted in Dr. Davison's interest in the case, but for your courtesy, and most especially for your understanding of the fact that a human being such as myself could be presenting such a case without any personal axe to grind. It was not until I reached your door that I had even bee received with common courtesy. Cordially yours." At the time of this letter, journalist Ernie Pyle (1900-1945), who has typed Scripps-Howard Newspapers, Washington, D.C. at the lower margin of this letter, was crisscrossing the country gathering material for his columns, which appeared six times weekly in the Scripps-Howard Newspapers' 24 publications (his columns would eventually appear in over 200 newspapers). Pyle had joined the syndicate as a roving reporter after serving as the managing editor of the Washington "Daily News". Not content with his former desk job, he and his wife, Jerry, spent two years traveling across the U .S. to find stories that were known for his simple, warm, human writing style. After Jerry became increasingly ill, battling depression and substance abuse, Pyle sought out his stories on his own, writing for the syndicate for seven years before he left to become a war correspondent - and win his greatest fame. Pyle wrote his last column in Europe in September 1944, the year he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his reports from the European battlefront. After traveling to the Pacific to cover the war there, the 44-year-old Pyle was killed by machine gun fire on the island of Ie Shima on April 18, 1945. Compilations of his war columns appear in a number of books, and his coverage of the Italian campaign was the basis for the 1945 film, G.I. Joe. Dampstained at upper left blank margin, paper clip rust stains at upper blank edge and lower margin beneath typed text. Lightly soiled. Overall, fine condition.