(Middletown, CT) —William Manchester, one of America's most noted writers and historians, died June 1 at his home in Middletown, Connecticut, less than two weeks after his publisher announced that an agreement had been reached to help him finish the final volume in his biography of Winston Churchill: The Last Lion, Volume III.
Manchester, professor of history emeritus at Wesleyan, was 82 years old and had been in declining health after suffering two strokes.
The author of 18 books translated into 20 languages, Manchester first acquired an international reputation in 1967 with his account of the assassination of President Kennedy, The Death of a President: November 1963, which he had written at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy.
His other books include Goodbye Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and his biography of Douglas MacArthur, American Caesar, nominated for a National Book Award.
Manchester had expressed doubt that his Churchill trilogy would ever be completed. The first two volumes, Visions of Glory: 1874–1931 and Alone: 1932–1940, were published in 1983 and 1988, respectively, but poor health had prevented him from completing the third.
On May 21, Little, Brown and Co. announced that, with Manchester's consent, Paul Reid, a feature writer at The Palm Beach Post, would help complete the final book of Britain’s World War II leader.
Joseph Lynch, Manchester's attorney for many years, said Tuesday that the historian’s death is not expected to interfere with completion of the book.
Born in Attleboro, Mass., on April 1, 1922, Manchester received a bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. He started his career as a copy boy on the Daily Oklahoman at $16 week, where his recently widowed mother was living.
After writing a graduate school dissertation on the literary criticism of H.L. Mencken, he obtained Mencken's permission to write a biography and his assistance in securing a job on the Baltimore Sun. Manchester served as the paper's Washington correspondent and subsequently as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, India, and Southeast Asia. While at the Sun, he met and married the late Julia Brown Marshall. She died in 1998, a day before they were to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.
He served with the Marines during World War II, earning a Navy Cross and two Purple Hearts for "wounds received in action" on June 5, 1945, on Okinawa. In 1994, cardiovascular surgeons studying an X-ray of his heart discovered a two-centimeter-long bullet lodged in his right ventricle. He had carried this souvenir of battle, unknowingly, for 50 years. His Marine service was a family tradition: his father served in WWI and his brother in Korea.
He came to Wesleyan in 1955 as managing editor for high school papers with American Education Publications, then owned by the university. In 1959 the late Wesleyan President Victor Butterfield named him the first fellow of Wesleyan’s Center for Advanced Studied (now the Center for the Humanities). Later, he became writer-in-residence and adjunct professor of history.
Manchester maintained an office at Wesleyan's Olin Memorial Library, where he organized his research into elaborate categories with the aid of highlighters and felt-tipped pens in 17 colors. He noted that he used to work “fantastic hours,” returning home from his office for another session that would sometimes stretch all night. His daughter Laurie says, however, that her father placed a high priority on family life, and spent many hours a day reading to his children and playing games with them.
At the time of his death, he was living in a house on Pine Street in Middletown that he and his family had built in 1968 (designed by the late Wesleyan faculty member and architect John Martin). He lived in Washington, D.C., during 1964 and 1965 when he was working on Death of a President; he had an office at the National Archives. He lived briefly in Germany while working on The Arms of Krupp (1968), a study of the Krupp munitions dynasty, and also resided in England to research the Churchill books.
Death of a President created considerable controversy when Jacqueline Kennedy filed suit to prevent its publication. (The book contained details of Kennedy family life that she did not want revealed.) Manchester and Jacqueline Kennedy resolved their differences, however.
Manchester's other works include Disturber of the Peace, a biography of H.L. Mencken; The Glory and the Dream, a history of the United States from 1932 to 1972; One Brief Shining Moment, a personal memoir of President Kennedy; and A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance-Portrait of an Age.
Manchester received the National Humanities Award in April 2002, presented to him by President Bush. His other honors include the Prix Dag Hammarsköld au Mérite Litteraire, the Lincoln Literary Award, the Washington Irving Award, and Sarah Josepha Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, and five honorary doctorates, including one from Wesleyan. He had met four U.S. presidents and was a personal friend of President Kennedy.
He was a fellow of Pierson College of Yale University. He also was a member of the Society of American Historians, the Williams Club, the University Club of Hartford, and the Century Club of New York.
He is survived by three children: John of Conway, Mass.; Julie Manchester of Bradenton, Fla.; and Laurie Manchester of Tempe, Ariz., as well as three grandchildren. He is also survived by his caregiver of the past five years, Vaiga, and his brother Robert Manchester of Norman, Oklahoma.
Services will be held Sunday, June 13, at 2 p.m. in the Wesleyan University Chapel. In lieu of flowers, donations to Wesleyan University are requested.
![[Wesleyan University]](http://www.wesleyan.edu/templates/utilities/navbar_2009/logo.gif "Wesleyan University front door"){kind=logo}
