With eyes on national tribute, New Mexico celebration to honor WWII journalist Pyle
Correspondent helped Americans understand bloody conflict, sacrifices
On what will be the 117th anniversary of his birth near tiny Dana, Ind., Ernie Pyle, the decorated World War II correspondent, will be celebrated more than 1,200 miles away in Albuquerque, the city Pyle had planned to make his home before a Japanese bullet found him on a Pacific island in April 1945.
New Mexico has long cherished its connection to adopted son Pyle, whose firsthand accounts of history’s bloodiest conflict imprinted upon millions of American newspaper readers the horrors of war, the intimate experiences and the sacrifices of its participants.
In 1945, the New Mexico Legislature declared Aug. 3, his birthday, Ernie Pyle Day. Each year it is marked by those who remember — whether journalist, veteran or state history buff. The home he purchased in Albuquerque became that city’s first branch library and operates as such to this day; it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2006. An Albuquerque middle school also is named for him.
The nonprofit Ernie Pyle Legacy Foundation will host a fete Thursday for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s legacy, an event organizers and participants hope might serve as a springboard to an annual national holiday in recognition of Pyle’s contributions to American understanding of the war that claimed tens of millions of lives — Pyle’s included.
While a nationwide tribute, requiring congressional involvement, might be the ultimate goal, a more immediate thrust of the celebration at the New Mexico Veterans’ Memorial in Albuquerque is a simple desire, organizers say, to hear Pyle’s name spoken, to remember his breathtaking essays, to champion the work he did to convey the stories of young men far from home.
Pyle’s story, as reflected by the list of speakers at the Thursday event, is a convergence of his own journalistic integrity and the military valor and hardship he covered.
Joe Galloway, a longtime war correspondent himself, will deliver a keynote address. Galloway wrote from Vietnam and more than a half-dozen other combat operations, including the Gulf War and, most recently, Iraq in 2006. His reporting amid battles and as a foreign bureau chief earned both journalistic accolades and military decoration in the form of a Bronze Star. Later, he became a special consultant to Colin Powell at the U.S. State Department. A bestselling book he co-authored, We Were Soldiers Once … and Young, was adapted into a film starring Mel Gibson.
Galloway, born three weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor, recalls reading Pyle’s collected columns as a youngster and deeming him both a hero and role model.
“I always thought, ‘I want to be a journalist, and if I become a reporter, and if my generation has its war, I would like to cover it, and I would want to cover it as much like Ernie Pyle covered his as I could,’ ” Galloway said.
Subsequent generations have forgotten Pyle, Galloway said. But the flame of his memory must stay lit, he said, for the sake of the American people and of parents whose sons and daughters have gone off to fight.
“You can only hope in each of the wars that comes along to this country that somewhere out there is someone like Ernie Pyle who will go out and risk everything to tell the stories of the soldiers and Marines, the infantry, the people on the ground who are fighting that war,” Galloway said.
Bernie Lambe, president of the New Mexico Veterans’ Memorial and a veteran, said Pyle resonates more than a half-century after his death because correspondence between a deployed soldier and home is a lifeline. Pyle’s work, his ability to capture a moment amid chaos and send it intact across an ocean, was, for many, a beacon, Lambe said.
“It reminds you of why you took an oath and put on the uniform,” he said.
Lambe said his favorite piece of the veterans memorial in Albuquerque is a spot on the east side of the site, where marble slabs abut a waterfall. Telegrams, letters and emails to and from soldiers have been engraved in the marble. It is a testament, Lambe said, to the importance of correspondence for a man or woman in uniform abroad.
He wants to add a monument to war correspondents there, Pyle in particular, he said. The editorial cartoons of Bill Mauldin, a native New Mexican whose work from the front lines won Pulitzer Prizes, could be installed in bronze, too, Lambe said.
“I can really turn that part of the park into a true representation of how absolutely important communication is,” Lambe said.
Meanwhile, as journalism comes under siege from even the highest reaches of American government, the legacy of one of its finest and bestremembered practitioners is ever more important, said Mike Marcotte, a professor
of journalism at The University of New Mexico who will speak Thursday. Pyle’s directness, his ability to identify the intimate detail and make a connection, was his defining trait, Marcotte said.
“I think all journalists look to Ernie Pyle as a figure to emulate in good boots-on-the-ground, detailed, humanistic reporting,” Marcotte said. “And he didn’t sugarcoat it. He had to report on a lot of death and describe blood and bodies, but he did it in a way that was very empathetic.”
He added, “Ernie teaches us it’s about people first.”