BUCHWALD, ART

BUCHWALD, ART (1925–2007), U.S. columnist. Born in Mt. Vernon, N.Y., Buchwald, together with his three sisters, spent his first four years in a Seventh Day Adventist children's shelter, as his mother had been institutionalized a few weeks after his birth. His father, a successful businessman, visited his children once a week but took them out of the facility when he heard his young son singing, "Jesus loves me, this I know." Buchwald spent the next several years in various foster homes in New York. He worked from age nine until he dropped out of school to join the Marines at 17. After the war ended, he enrolled in college but left before graduating and went to Paris on the money he received from the GI Bill. He remained there for 14 years. Buchwald began his journalistic career in 1948, working for Variety and then the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune. He wrote with zest and irreverence about people, politics, and places. In 1952 his editors brought his column to the U.S., and the Washington Post Syndicate began running it in 1966. His popular political satire later became syndicated with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, appearing in more than 550 newspapers around the world. In 1982 Buchwald won the Pulitzer Prize in the category of Outstanding Commentary. Four years later, he was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Collections of his columns have been published in volume form, among them the autobiographical The Brave Coward (1957), Is It Safe to Drink the Water? (1962), And Then I Told the President (1965), and Have I Ever Lied to You? (1968). He also wrote Son of the Great Society (1966); Counting Sheep (1970); I Am Not a Crook (1974); Washington Is Leaking (1976); Down the Seine and Up the Potomac with Art Buchwald (1977); The Buchwald Stops Here (1978); Laid Back in Washington (1981); While Reagan Slept (1983); You Can Fool All of the People All of the Time (1985); I Think I Don't Remember (1987); Whose Rose Garden Is It Anyway? (1989); Lighten Up, George (1991); Leaving Home (1993), an autobiography; I'll Always Have Paris (1996), the second volume of his memoirs; Stella in Heaven: Almost a Novel (2000); and the post-9/11 We'll Laugh Again (2002). (Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)