David E. Reed

David E. Reed (1927–1990), was a Reader's Digest roving editor.

Career

He was born in Chicago, Illinois. He graduated from the University of Chicago at age 18 and began his journalism career with the Chicago City News Service. He later joined the Chicago Daily News.

Reed was a roving editor with Reader's Digest who reported from more than 100 countries and covered more than a dozen wars, including wars in Vietnam, Angola, Nicaragua, Cambodia, and many conflicts elsewhere in the world. Reed learned Swahili during a two-year fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs to Kenya during the Mau Mau insurgency in the 1950s. In the late 1950s, he was a reporter for the U.S. News and World Report. He joined the Reader's Digest in the early 1960s and worked there for the remainder of his lifetime. He interviewed several United States presidents, including then president Richard Nixon at the White House in 1971: . He was the author of 111 Days in Stanleyville, Harper & Row, NY, 1965 and Up Front in Vietnam, Funk & Wagnalls, NY, 1967. 111 Days in Stanleyville was reprinted as Save The Hostages, Bantam Books, NY, 1988.

Reed wrote 111 Days in Stanleyville after spending more than four years in Africa during seven trips there on writing assignments. He took a two-month overland trip across the continent, and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. In 1960 he covered the independence push in Congo as a staff writer for the U.S. News and World Report magazine.

Reed wrote Up Front in Vietnam after spending months in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He travelled across Vietnam, criss-crossing back and forth in C-130 cargo planes, helicopters, trucks and jeeps. In the book, Reed wrote a series of sketches about what it was like to be up front with the soldiers in the combat zone in Vietnam.

In 1988, Reed received the Republic of China's International Communications Service award.

Reed was inducted into the Chicago Journalism Hall of Fame posthumously in 1992.

Selection of Reader's Digest articles by David E. Reed

North America

Latin America

Asia

Africa

Middle East

Europe

Early life and family

David Reed, son of Frank and Helen Reed, was born in 1927 and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. His father was a successful Chicago real estate broker. His grandfather, Thomas A. Reed, had migrated to Chicago from central Pennsylvania and worked at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the “Chicago World’s Fair.” He started a successful plastering and construction company at the Chicago World's Fair, now known as the Reed Illinois Corporation, which still exists in Chicago to the present day.

One of Reed’s 2nd great grandfathers: James Pettit (1777–1849), and his son Eber M. Pettit (1802–1885), operated a station on the Underground Railroad in New York state to assist escaping slaves from the South. Eber M. Pettit wrote “Sketches in the History of the Underground Railroad,” in 1879, which was reprinted in 1999. Jonathan Pettit (1752–1833), Reed's 3rd great-grandfather, served as a captain in the American Revolution in New York state. Reed was also related to the Adams presidential family.

David Reed was married to Marilyn "Mari" Mehoke-Chevalier, then of New York City, from 1961–1977, and had three children. He was married to Audrey Hamilton of Johannesburg, South Africa in the late 1970s. He married Irene Whitaker, then of Maryland, in 1988.

David Reed was an avid sailor. At different times while travelling the globe, he was based in New York, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia.

References

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