Higgins, Marguerite

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HIGGINS, Marguerite

Born 3 September 1920, Hong Kong; died 3 January 1966, Washington, D.C.

Daughter of Lawrence D. and Marguerite Godard Higgins; married Stanley Moore, 1940; William E. Hall, 1952; children two

Marguerite Higgins was born in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong to a globetrotting businessman and his French war bride. Marguerite was educated in France and England, and when the Higgins family returned to the U.S., she was enrolled in an exclusive private school in Oakland, California. After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, with honors in 1940, she went to work as a cub reporter for the local Vallejo Times-Herald. She was hired by the New York Herald Tribune after receiving her master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism; she worked for the paper for the next 21 years.

After three routine years on the Tribune reporting city visitors, suburban fires, and visiting royalty, Higgins won a coveted spot in the London bureau. Shortly thereafter, she transferred to the Paris bureau—largely because of her proficiency in French—and soon found herself reporting the wartime liberation of Europe. She made the front page regularly and built up a respected name for herself among the most experienced foreign correspondents in the world. She was twenty-five when the

Tribune named her Berlin bureau chief. During the Korean War, Higgins was the Tokyo bureau chief and was with the first reporters who made their way into Korea on returning evacuation planes, the only woman correspondent in Korea.

After her second marriage and the birth of two children, Higgins settled down to a less peripatetic schedule as a roving reporter for the Tribune and as a freelance writer for many periodicals. In the mid-1950s, Higgins reopened the Tribune 's Moscow bureau, and in 1956 she returned to Washington to cover the diplomatic beat. From then on, her competition claimed Higgins could be counted on to show up wherever a crisis occurred, from the Congo to the Dominican Republic. In 1963 Higgins resigned to become a syndicated columnist for Long Island's Newsday.

Out of her experiences covering the Korean conflict came War in Korea: The Report of a Woman Combat Correspondent (1951), which also appeared in a condensed form in Woman's Home Companion in 1951. The book was a bestseller, and Higgins became an overnight sensation, touring and lecturing throughout the country. In Report of a Woman Combat Correspondent, Higgins recounted her experiences on the front in Korea with a lively style and the sense of adventurous excitement she felt. Although the book tends to provide an unbalanced view of history, reviews were favorable, and it enjoyed a wide readership.

In 1954 Higgins received a Guggenheim Fellowship, allowing her to make a 10-week tour of Russia. Her experiences and reactions to life in Cold War Russia during the 13,500-mile trek are detailed in Red Plush and Black Bread, published in 1956.

Higgins and her longtime personal friend, the late newsman Peter Lisagor, together wrote and published Overtime in Heaven: Adventures in the Foreign Service (1964), a series of behind-the-scenes true stories of 10 Foreign Service incidents. A highly entertaining set of adventure vignettes, the series won credits for its carefully researched and documented materials, although one critic noted they had created a "composite portrait of the Foreign Service man who looks suspiciously like a more moral James Bond."

Higgins became increasingly interested in Vietnam as the country opened up into one of the world's most controversial hot spots, and she made 10 trips there. In late 1965, she was air ambulanced home, the victim of leishmaniasis, a disease brought on by the bite of a tropical sandfly, and within six weeks she was dead.

Her Vietnam study, Our Vietnam Nightmare (1965), presented her research and conclusions on what was actually happening in Vietnam as a result of U.S. foreign policy and actions, covering the period from the Buddhist revolt and Diem's fall in 1963 to the changing political tactics of the Viet Cong in the summer of 1965. Herman Dinsmore, former New York Times international edition editor, called it "superb." He said, "She was not the most popular correspondent for one excellent reason: she was so brilliant she outshone every writer around her, men and women: and, of course, she was industrious, clever, and, of all things, patriotic."

Other Works:

News Is a Singular Thing (1955). Jessie Benton Frémont (1962).

Bibliography:

Army Times editors, American Heroes of Asian Wars (1968). Fleming, A. M., Reporters at War (1970). Forese, A., American Women Who Scored Firsts (1958). Jakes, J., Great War Correspondents (1967). Kelly, F. K., Reporters Around the World (1957).