Deceased March 18, 2017
View alumni profile (log in required)
Read obituary
In Memory
George, the longtime secretary of his class, died in New York March 18, shortly after turning 101.
A native of Rome who came to America as a child and grew up in Waterbury, Conn., he began a 43-year journalism career soon after graduation, starting at newspapers in Connecticut, before joining the Associated Press in Boston in 1942, where he helped cover the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire which killed 492 people.
By 1944 he was a war correspondent in Italy, bearing witness to the death of Benito Mussolini and sending the flash reporting the surrender of more than a million German troops in Italy and parts of Austria. He went on to AP’s post-war staff in Germany, where he covered the Nuremberg War Crimes trials and the Berlin airlift of 1948-49.
After a second stint in Rome, he returned to AP’s New York headquarters where he spent almost 18 years as one of the key gatekeepers for world news reaching the American public, ultimately as day supervisor of the AP’s foreign desk, where he also mentored a generation of future foreign correspondents. In 1972-74 he took a break from the desk to serve as AP’s chief correspondent at the United Nations.
Following his formal retirement in 1981, George pursued two of his favorite avocations: tennis and gardening. He wrote over 200 gardening columns as an AP freelancer, and played tennis well into his 90s, competing credibly in senior tournaments.
His first wife, Mary, died in 1998. He is survived by his second wife Arlette, his daughter Judy Storey, his son John and seven grand and great-grandchildren.
In recent years George mused to friends that after he had written obits for so many of his classmates, there would be no one left to write his. Wrong, George. You taught me how to do it.
Claude E. Erbsen ’59