37 Facts About John Hersey

John Richard Hersey was an American writer and journalist.

John Hersey is considered one of the earliest practitioners of the so-called New Journalism, in which storytelling techniques of fiction are adapted to non-fiction reportage.

John Hersey was born in Tianjin, China, the son of Grace Baird and Roscoe John Hersey, Protestant missionaries for the YMCA in Tianjin.

John Hersey was a descendant of William Hersey of Reading, Berkshire, England.

William John Hersey was one of the first settlers of Hingham, Massachusetts in 1635.

John Hersey returned to the United States with his family when he was ten years old.

John Hersey attended public school in Briarcliff Manor, New York, including Briarcliff High School for two years.

John Hersey studied at Yale University, where he was a member of the Skull and Bones Society along with classmates Brendan Gill and Richard A Moore.

John Hersey lettered in football at Yale, where he was coached by Ducky Pond, Greasy Neale, and Gerald Ford.

John Hersey was a teammate of Larry Kelley and Clint Frank, Yale's two Heisman Trophy winners.

John Hersey subsequently was selected as a Mellon Fellow for graduate study at the University of Cambridge.

John Hersey chafed at those duties, and that autumn he began work for Time, for which he was hired after writing an essay on the magazine's dismal quality.

John Hersey accompanied Allied troops on their invasion of Sicily, survived four airplane crashes, and was commended by the Secretary of the Navy for his role in helping evacuate wounded soldiers from Guadalcanal.

John Hersey led the rescue of his crew, personally towing the injured to safety.

John Hersey proposed a story that would convey the cataclysmic narrative through individuals who survived.

In May 1946, John Hersey traveled to Japan, where he spent three weeks doing research and interviewing survivors.

John Hersey often decried the New Journalism, although he had helped create it.

Later, the ascetic John Hersey came to feel that some elements of the New Journalism of the 1970s were not rigorous enough about fact and reporting.

In 1950, during the Red Scare, John Hersey was investigated by the FBI for possible Communist sympathies related to his past speeches and financial contributions, for example to the American Civil Liberties Union.

John Hersey criticized the school system in his novel The Child Buyer, a speculative fiction.

John Hersey learns that his romantic concepts of China brings disaster.

John Hersey wrote The Algiers Motel Incident, a non-fiction work about a racially motivated shooting of three young African-American men by police during the 12th Street Riot in Detroit, Michigan, in July 1967.

From 1965 to 1970, John Hersey was master of Pierson College, one of twelve residential colleges at Yale University.

John Hersey pursued an unusual sideline: he operated the college's small letterpress printing operation, which he sometimes used to publish broadsides.

For 18 years John Hersey taught two writing courses, in fiction and non-fiction, to Yale undergraduates.

John Hersey taught his last class in fiction writing at Yale during 1984.

John Hersey later said that he was relieved that Luce had saved that particular revelation for a more private audience.

In 1969 John Hersey donated the services of his bulldog 'Oliver' as mascot for the Yale football team, but he was concerned about his dog's interest level as Handsome Dan XI.

John Hersey said that half of his book, Men on Bataan, came from work filed for Time by Melville Jacoby and his wife, Annalee Jacoby Fadiman.

John Hersey's death was front-page news in the next day's New York Times.

John Hersey was survived by his second wife, Barbara Jean Day, Hersey's five children, one of whom is the composer and musician Baird Hersey, and six grandchildren.

Barbara John Hersey died on Martha's Vineyard 14 years later on August 16,2007.

John Hersey has given us the century in a great shelf of brilliant work, and we are all his beneficiaries.

John Hersey was the first non-academic named master of a Yale residential college.

John Hersey was past president of the Authors League of America, and he was elected chancellor by the membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

John Hersey was an honorary fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University.

John Hersey was awarded honorary degrees by Yale University, the New School for Social Research, Syracuse University, Washington and Jefferson College, Wesleyan University, The College of William and Mary and others.