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Childs, Marquis 1903-1990

CHILDS, MCBAINE

Posted By: NettieMae (email)
Date: 1/27/2017 at 09:39:18

Marquis W. Childs Is Dead at 87; Won a Pulitzer for Commentary
By WOLFGANG SAXON
Published in the New York Times July 2, 1990

Marquis W. Childs, a foreign correspondent, columnist, author and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, died Saturday at Children's Hospital of San Francisco. He was 87 years old. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, where he wrote about Washington and the nation for 47 years, reported that Mr. Childs had died of ''infirmities.'' He had been in failing health for several months and was taken to the hospital Friday after lapsing into a coma at his home, the newspaper said.

Starting with The Post-Dispatch in 1926, Marquis Childs (the first name is pronounced MARK-us) was the paper's chief Washington correspondent from 1962 to 1968 and won his Pulitzer Prize in 1970, when he was a contributing editor at The Post-Dispatch.

Mr. Childs formally retired in 1974 but continued to express his views occasionally in The Post-Dispatch. The paper carried his last commentary in February 1989.

Interviews With World Leaders

During his long career, national and world leaders confided in him. Thus, Mr. Childs had private interviews with Presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Dwight D. Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy. He met Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Chou En-lai and Konrad Adenauer.

In 1956, Mr. Childs interviewed Harold Macmillan and Prime Minister Anthony Eden of Britain, and he forecast, correctly, the latter's political demise. More recently, he made American-Soviet diplomatic relations one of his themes, with his columns often reminding readers of the horrors of the nuclear arms race.

Mr. Childs championed civil rights and, for many years, wrote about the plight of the poor.

He was the author of a dozen books on political and economic matters as well as three novels and a ''biography'' of the Mississippi. His nonfiction included ''Sweden: The Middle Way'' (1936), ''Sweden: The Middle Way on Trial'' (1980) and ''Witness to Power'' (1975).

With Douglass Cater, he wrote ''Ethics in Business Society'' (1954), and he co-edited, with James H. Reston of The New York Times, ''Walter Lippmann and His Times'' (1959).

'A Sense of History'

Mr. Reston, a longtime friend, said yesterday, ''Mark Childs lived through the greatest period of American journalism - from Roosevelt's New Deal in the 30's to the end of the cold war in the 90's, and he did it all with a sense of history and a sense of humor.

''He was equally at home on the Mississippi and the Potomac, writing about everybody from Tom Sawyer to Ronald Reagan.''

Marquis William Childs was born on March 17, 1903, in Clinton, Iowa. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin and earned a master's degree at the University of Iowa while already working for The Post-Dispatch.

He briefly went to work for United Press in 1923. He rejoined the news agency in 1944. The Post-Dispatch carried his agency work and returned full time to The Post-Dispatch in 1954.

Mr. Childs, who lived in San Francisco for several years after his retirement, is survived by his wife, the former Jane Neylan McBaine, and a son, Prentiss.


 

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