Gary G. Yerkey ’66 publishes new non-fiction book

Gary G. Yerkey ’66 of Washington, D.C., has published a new book, Dying for the News. It is available on amazon.com.

More than 50 journalists working for U.S. news organizations were killed covering World War II, including 35-year-old Tom Treanor of the Los Angeles Times. The book is his story, but also the story of the others who were killed on the battlefield in Europe and the Pacific between 1940 and 1945 — of their quest for adventure, their passion for the news despite the risks, and their constant longing for home.

Like the others, of course, Treanor knew what he was doing. Yet they were unable resist the tug of war. “Always,” he wrote, “there is this hypnotic drag pulling you toward battle.” He returned home to Los Angeles to rest — but only briefly. In mid-May 1944, he returned to Europe to cover the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France. Three months later, just west of Paris, he was killed. His friend and fellow reporter Don Whitehead, of the AP, called Treanor one of the most colorful figures who covered the war and one of the most courageous. Damon Runyon, the legendary American newspaperman and author, said he was “one of the best.”

Yerkey was born in Chicago and spent more than a decade in Europe and the Middle East reporting for TIME-LIFE, the Christian Science Monitor, ABC News, the International Herald Tribune and other U.S. news organizations. He is currently a writer based in Washington, D.C., and the author of Still Time to Live: A Biography of Jack Belden and South to Selma: ‘Outside Agitators’ and the Civil Rights March that Changed America.