Willis Thornton

Willis Thornton (1900-1965) was a journalist, historian, and editor. He joined Scripps-Howard in 1921, working for the CLEVELAND PRESS and then the Washington Daily News, where he became city editor. In 1930 he moved to the Scripps-Howard feature service, Newspaper Enterprise Assoc., working both in the New York office as bureau manager and in the Cleveland office as writer and editor. During WORLD WAR II he enlisted in the Army as a private, serving with a prisoner of war interrogation unit in Europe and returning as a captain. He earned a master's in history from Western Reserve and lectured there in journalism and American history. Among Thornton's books were The Third Term Issue (1939), Almanac for Americans (1941), Fable, Fact and History (1957), and The Liberation of Paris (1962). In 1959 he was appointed director of the Press of Western Reserve University, a position he held until his death.

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The Day They Burned The Capitol, December 1954 | Vol. 6, No. 1

Only a lucky rainfall put an end to our humiliation

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