RAYMOND GRAM SWING - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 02/24/1947 - HFSID 203263

RAYMOND GRAM SWING
The WWI and WWII correspondent who became well-known via his newspaper and radio work handwrote and signed this letter during his rehabilitation from surgery
Autograph Letter Signed: “Raymond Swing” in blue ink to a “Mr. Laughlin”. 5¼x8½. Letterhead of Raymond Swing's Washington, District of Columbia office. Dated February 24, 1947. Text in Full: “I have been having, and getting over, a surgical operation which explains my delay in responding to the Cornell book. I should be glad to be quoted as calling it 'an able and remarkably lucid statement of the greatest problem before mankind today'./Yours sincerely”. Raymond Gram Swing (1887-1968) was a journalist who first worked at a newspaper in 1906 with the Cleveland Press. Just seven years later, he was the Chicago Daily Newsbureau chief for the paper's Berlin, Germany department. His coverage of WWI, particularly Big Bertha and the Dardanelles campaign, established name recognition of the journalist nationwide. He shifted towards radio journalism, which is where he reported on WWII for the Mutual Broadcasting System. Swing strongly believed in gender and racial equality, so when his feminist and suffragist wife Betty Gram requested that both of them take both surnames, he agreed. They remained married from 1919-1944, but upon their divorce he had trouble shaking off her surname of Gram. He came to be known as Raymond Gram Swing during his heyday. Tape at top left and right corner. Lightly creased. Otherwise, fine condition.