Heinz, W.C. 1915-2008 (Bill Heinz, Wilfred Charles Heinz, Richard Hooker, a joint pseudonym)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born January 11, 1915, in Mount Vernon, NY; died February 27, 2008, in Bennington, VT. Correspondent, magazine writer, columnist, journalist, and author. Heinz was known as a journalist who wrote like a novelist or practitioner of creative nonfiction. In his hands a war story touched readers with the very human details of what it felt like to be the victor—or the vanquished. A sports story vividly recalled the energy and drama of the boxing ring or the roar of the crowd in the stadium. The story was greater than the sum of its facts, and other reporters claimed that his "New Journalism" changed the voice of print journalism forever. When he wrote novels, Heinz combined his creative voice with the reporter's eye for detail and discipline for understatement, allowing the drama of the moment to reveal the story beneath. One of these was the best-selling novel MASH (1968), written with Korean battlefield veteran Dr. H. Richard Hornberger under the joint pseudonym Richard Hooker. It was Heinz's journalism, however, that impressed even the best of his peers, including Damon Runyon, Ring Lardner, and Red Smith. Heinz was a reporter for the New York Sun from about 1937, filing his stories as an overseas correspondent from Europe during World War II, then working as a sports reporter, columnist, and feature writer specializing in professional boxing. When the Sun closed its doors in 1950, Heinz became a freelance magazine writer, with occasional forays into fiction. One of his works was The Professional (1958), about the training of a boxer for the crowning match of his career; the novel generated rave reviews and the recommendation of no less a colleague than Ernest Hemingway. Heinz once told CA that his intention in all his writing was to enable the reader to feel like a genuine eyewitness to history. His writings touched the hearts of readers for more than seventy years and seem poised to live on in collections like American Mirror (1982), What a Time It Was: The Best of W.C. Heinz on Sports (2001), and When We Were One: Stories of World War II (2002).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, February 28, 2008, p. B6.

New York Times, February 28, 2008, p. A25.

Sports Illustrated, September, 2000, profile of W.C. Heinz.