Meet the Players: Stewart Alsop

Stewart Alsop

 Stewart Johonnot Oliver Alsop (May 17, 1914 – May 26, 1974) was born in May 17, 1914 in Avon, Connecticut. Alsop attended the Groton School in Massachusset, and then Yale University. After graduating from Yale in 1936, Alsop moved to New York City, where he worked as an editor for the publishing house of Doubleday, Doran. 

After the United States entered World War II, Alsop joined the British Army, because his high blood pressure precluded his joining the United States Army. While training in England, Alsop met Patricia Barnard "Tish" Hankey, an Englishwoman, whom he would marry on June 20, 1944.

A month after the wedding, Alsop was allowed to transfer to the U.S. Army, and was immediately sent on a mission planned by the Office of Strategic Services. For the mission, Alsop was parachuted into the Périgord region of France to aid the French Resistance. Alsop was later awarded the Croix de Guerre with Palm for his work on that and other wartime missions. Alsop worked with and for the OSS for the rest of the war.

After the war, Alsop resumed his journalism career, now working with his brother, Joseph. Both self-styled New Deal liberals, to produce a column called "Matter of Fact" for the Herald Tribune. Generally, Stewart remained headquartered in Washington to cover domestic politics, while Joseph traveled the world, covering foreign affairs. Their partnership lasted from 1945 until 1958. After the Alsop brothers ended their partnership, Stewart Alsop went on to write articles and a regular column for the Saturday Evening Post until 1968, then a weekly column for Newsweek from 1968 to 1974.

Stewart published several books, including a "sort of memoir" of his battle with an unusual form of leukemia, Stay of Execution. At the end of his battle with cancer, he requested that he be given something other than morphine to numb the pain because he was tired of morphine's sedative effect. His doctor suggested heroin. Alsop passed away on May 26, 1974, and left behind 6 children with his wife Tish.