[Deathwatch] Walter Lord, "A Night to Remember" Author, 84

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Walter Lord, chronicled Titanic sinking, dead
May 20, 2002 Posted: 7:44 PM EDT (2344 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/books/05/20/obit.walter.lord.ap/index.h
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NEW YORK (AP) -- Walter Lord, who went from writing obscure tax manuals
for businessmen to literary fame as the best-selling author of "A Night
to Remember," a gripping account of the sinking of the Titanic, is dead
at 84. 

Lord died Sunday at his Manhattan home after a long struggle with
Parkinson's disease, said Evan Thomas, a Newsweek editor and close
friend. A lifelong bachelor, Lord leaves no survivors but "a ton of
friends," Thomas said. 

Some of those date to World War II, when Lord worked in the London
headquarters of the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the
Central Intelligence Agency. 

While Lord wrote a dozen successful books on such subjects as Pearl
Harbor, the Battle of Midway, the Alamo, polar exploration and the
civil rights struggle, he was best known for the 1955 book on the
Titanic. 

Using techniques learned in researching tax issues, he tracked down
some 60 survivors of the 1912 maritime disaster and turned their
stories into a dramatic, minute-by-minute account of how the
"unsinkable" British liner went down on its maiden voyage after
colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic. 

"He was a pioneer in bringing journalistic narrative to history,"
Thomas said. "It's a common technique now, but it was anything but
commonplace in the 1950s." 

Lord was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 8, 1917, graduated
from Princeton University in 1939 and joined the Office of Strategic
Services in London in 1942. He was the agency's secretariat when the
war ended in 1945. 

A memorial service is planned for June 10 at the New York Historical
Society. 

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