Sunday, July 10, 2016

Sydney H. Schanberg ... by gimleteye

A great journalist, Sydney Schanberg, passed last week at age 82.

It's been years since Schanberg came to mind. He is best known for his work as a correspondent in Asia for the New York Times and his book, "The Killing Fields", documenting the harrowing path of Schanberg's translator, Dith Pran, who miraculously survived the cataclysmic descent of Cambodia into horror and chaos in the early 1970s.

I only knew Schanberg from his byline. I was a college student in the early 1970s when Schanberg's reporting provided Vietnam War critics the facts of an American intervention gone badly wrong.

There are mentors one never meets, except through reading. Schanberg was one of them, to me.

1 comment:

Geniusofdespair said...

Mentors one never meets... For me it would be Thurgood Marshall. I would say Betty Friedan but i did see her at a Thai restaurant. i sent her a drink from another table and she invited me to join her and Norman Lear's X.