Notes for Robert Edward Jackson:
GRAD: 1947 Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Albemarle Co., Virginia
Military Service: ABT. 1944 World War II, U.S. Navy
Occupation: Journalist: United Press, Time Magazine, Washington Post
Residence: New York, New York
Note:
Source Paul Murauskas:
North Carolina Birth Index, 1800-2000
Name: Robt Edward Jackson
Date of Birth: 14 Jan 1925
Birth County: Surry Co., NC
Parent1 Name: Robt R Jackson
Parent2 Name: Annie H Britton
Roll Number: B_C092_66001
Volume: 11
Page: 772
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1930 United States Federal Census, Mount Airy, Surry, North Carolina
388 No. Main Street
Robert R. Jackson 41, married age 31, Manager Department Store
Annie B. Jackson 35, married age 25
Robert E. Jackson 5
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Notes provided by Dick Jackson from email to Paul Murauskas
(1) "In becoming Rome bureau chief (for TIME magazine), Ed Jackson will be returning to a familiar scene. He was Rome bureau manager for the United Press, as it was then known, during the four years which preceded his coming to TIME in 1957 as a foreign news writer. Before Rome, Jackson was on U.P.'s London staff, from 1949 to 1953.
"It was in London that the Jacksons' two sons, Roger, 12, and Blair, 9, were born. One evening last week Ed, having already confided in his wife Peggy, convened a family meeting in the living room of their Pelham Manor home and told the boys of his Rome assignment. Their first reaction was that the move would take them away from their valued friends, whom they listed. Jackson was quick to point out that several on the list had already moved away to such remote places as Cleveland, Ohio. Looking far ahead, Blair, who spoke Italian before he learned English, asked: "Will we be back in time for college?" Next morning Ed noted that the books Blair was lugging off to school included a Berlitz Italian phrase book, useful in refreshing dim recollections of the language of his earliest childhood.
"Lest this leave any impression that Jackson is mostly a foreign type, it should be noted that he was born in Mount Airy, N.C., is a graduate (cum laude) of Washington and Lee University, '47, and served his journalistic apprenticeship on three North Carolina newspapers before Navy service in World War II."
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Source: TIME-LIFE News Service memo from Don Bermingham, Nov. 19, 1962
Ed's interest in journalism started at age 7. He had gone to a baseball game and was disapppointed that the game wasn's written up in the newspaper, so he went to his room and created a write-up himself. Ed loved the New York newspapers that his dad brought back from buying trips for his store, and he also read the Baltimore Sun. At age 12 he produced the "Daily Journal," a neighborhood newspaper that he and his staff of young friends first duplicated by carbons, later by hectograph, and finally with his own mimeograph machine. The paper was popular but his family limited distribution to 200. He published such local news as "Mr. & Mrs. So-and-so went to Okrakoke for the weekend and the bottles were flying," or "Someone drained the gas from Mr. Whitlock's Chevrolet; Mrs. Mundy across the street saw the incident but didn't report it." He and another boy once came across a collection of love letters and printed them word-for-word from memory. An article about the boys' enterprise appeared in the Winston-Salem paper, describing it as "astonishingly well edited." At age 13 Ed wrote a teenage gossip column for the Mount Airy News, called "From Piggy's Pen." After a stint in the Navy and graduation from Washington and Lee, Ed was hired by United Press to work at the New York cable desk, where he oversaw news coming in from abroad. After two years, he was transferred to London, where both his sons were born under the National Health Plan (at a cost of 55 pounds, or about $100, for the finest Harley Street doctor). On their first night in London, UP put Ed and his wife up at a suite in the Savoy hotel overlooking the Thames; their subsequent flat with a light bulb hanging down from the ceiling was rather a come-down. Times were difficult for the average Englishman then, when "one egg per person per week perhaps" was the norm. He recalls the dirty looks he received after standing in line at the fishmonger's to get "codfish for the cat." He also recalls going with others from the American press to a party at Buckingham Palace, where he met the royal family and afterwards dictated the story over the phone from a local pub. Another time when Ed's little son Roger was pulling his stuffed "Doggy" on wheels down a London sidewalk, old Queen Mary had her driver pull over so she could speak to the boy and admire his toy. Ed loved the witty repartee in the House of Commons, so different from the polodding, ponderous speeches in the US Congress. In 1953 UP gave Ed a news bureau of his own in Rome, where he covered the Vatican as well as Italy itself, including the Trieste dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia. Mrs. Clare Booth Luce was ambassador to Italy at the time and attracted a lot of attention to Italy because she "inserted herself into everything" that was going on, and indeed helped solve the Trieste dispute. During the Cold War, the Communicst Party was strong in Italy, and Ed recalls seeing a headline prior to an election: "Italy to Choose Uncle -- Joe [Stalin] or Sam?" When Pope Pius XII was quite ill in 1954, Ed wrote a story about him, which he later saw published after Pius finally died in 1959.
In 1956 UP brought Ed back to New York, but a vice president's joke didn't sit well: "We brought you back to the US and you want a raise too?" A job offer Time magazine at nearly double his UP salary soon brought Ed back to Europe, where he became Time's bureau chief in Rome.
Even in his retirement in New York, Ed reads six newspapers a day to stay on top of the news. He is proud of his award from the NC Journalism Hall of Fame in Chapel Hill, where his picture is on the wall at the UNC-CH School of Journalism in Howell Hall.
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R. Edward Jackson (1995)
Ed Jackson's remarkable journalism career began at age 12, when he produced a neighborhood mimeographed daily newspaper, The Daily Journal, in his native Mount Airy, N.C. In high school, he wrote sports and news for the Mount Airy News and Mt. Airy Times and was a sportswriter and news stringer for the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel.
That experience, coupled with a three-year Pacific stint in the Navy, led him to become a foreign newswriter for United Press in 1947. He covered British news as a correspondent in London and edited international news that went through the London office. He moved to Italy in 1953 to run the UP bureau in Rome, where he covered Italian news and the Vatican.
Time magazine hired him in 1957. During his 29 years with Time, he was a contributing editor, news editor, Rome bureau chief, Washington news editor and the magazine's first international editor. He left Time in 1986 as deputy chief of correspondents and was later named editor-in-chief of World Press Review, a 75,000-circulation monthly news magazine consisting of stories from overseas publications. He retired in 1991.
He established the Edward Jackson International Scholarship in the UNC-CH School of Journalism and Mass Communiation in 1992. The endowment provides funds for a news-editorial student, preferably from North Carolina, to travel to a country in Europe to learn about its politics, culture and mass media by living and working there.
Jackson graduated cum laude with a bachelor's in history from Washington and Lee University.
He has served as vice president of the Overseas Press Club and vice president and secretary of The Correspondents Fund, which provides scholarship funds to needy journalists and students.
Source: UNC's School of Journalism Web Site -- Journalism Hall of Fame
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Source: Ed Jackson, personal conversation, March 19, 2002 with Dorothy Jackson Britton?
"Mr. Reid " was well-known as the dean of Main Street merchants. At 80 he was still at work each day. During one of his interviews during the 1970s he commented on his 60 years in business. "I can remember when horse-drawn wagons used to get stuck in the mudholes on Main Street in front of the store. Stepping stones crossed Main Street way back then as a convenience for pedestrians. There were no electric lights. Almost every housewife sewed clothes for the family. In fact, aside from shoes and hats, the biggest part of the retail business in those early years was for 'fixin's,' so the women could make clothes at home -- dry goods, piece goods, and notions," he said.
"Mr. Reid" also commented, "Then we sold all staple items. Today it's fashion apparel which dominates. Three persons, including the owners, could run the store when Jackson Brothers was established. We were the first store in Mount Airy to hire a woman as a sales clerk. Today you couldn't get along without them."
In addition to his business interest, "Mr. Reid" spent quite a bit of time enjoying farming. He was a longtime member and treasurer of First Baptist Church and also a member of the Wage and Price Control Board of Surry County during World War II.
He was married to Annie Britton of Greensboro and they had one son, Edward Jackson. Reid Jackson died in May 1979.
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Source: TIME-LIFE News Service memo from Don Bermingham, Nov. 19, 1962
Ed's interest in journalism started at age 7. He had gone to a baseball game and was disapppointed that the game wasn's written up in the newspaper, so he went to his room and created a write-up himself. Ed loved the New York newspapers that his dad brought back from buying trips for his store, and he also read the Baltimore Sun. At age 12 he produced the "Daily Journal," a neighborhood newspaper that he and his staff of young friends first duplicated by carbons, later by hectograph, and finally with his own mimeograph machine. The paper was popular but his family limited distribution to 200. He published such local news as "Mr. & Mrs. So-and-so went to Okrakoke for the weekend and the bottles were flying," or "Someone drained the gas from Mr. Whitlock's Chevrolet; Mrs. Mundy across the street saw the incident but didn't report it." He and another boy once came across a collection of love letters and printed them word-for-word from memory. An article about the boys' enterprise appeared in the Winston-Salem paper, describing it as "astonishingly well edited." At age 13 Ed wrote a teenage gossip column for the Mount Airy News, called "From Piggy's Pen."
After a stint in the Navy and graduation from Washington and Lee, Ed was hired by United Press to work at the New York cable desk, where he oversaw news coming in from abroad. After two years, he was transferred to London, where both his sons were born under the National Health Plan (at a cost of 55 pounds, or about $100, for the finest Harley Street doctor). On their first night in London, UP put Ed and his wife up at a suite in the Savoy hotel overlooking the Thames; their subsequent flat with a light bulb hanging down from the ceiling was rather a come-down. Times were difficult for the average Englishman then, when "one egg per person per week perhaps" was the norm. He recalls the dirty looks he received after standing in line at the fishmonger's to get "codfish for the cat." He also recalls going with others from the American press to a party at Buckingham Palace, where he met the royal family and afterwards dictated the story over the phone from a local pub. Another time when Ed's little son Roger was pulling his stuffed "Doggy" on wheels down a London sidewalk, old Queen Mary had her driver pull over so she could speak to the boy and admire his toy. Ed loved the witty repartee in the House of Commons, so different from the polodding, ponderous speeches in the US Congress.
In 1953 UP gave Ed a news bureau of his own in Rome, where he covered the Vatican as well as Italy itself, including the Trieste dispute between Italy and Yugoslavia. Mrs. Clare Booth Luce was ambassador to Italy at the time and attracted a lot of attention to Italy because she "inserted herself into everything" that was going on, and indeed helped solve the Trieste dispute. During the Cold War, the Communicst Party was strong in Italy, and Ed recalls seeing a headline prior to an election: "Italy to Choose Uncle -- Joe [Stalin] or Sam?" When Pope Pius XII was quite ill in 1954, Ed wrote a story about him, which he later saw published after Pius finally died in 1959.
In 1956 UP brought Ed back to New York, but a vice president's joke didn't sit well: "We brought you back to the US and you want a raise too?" A job offer Time magazine at nearly double his UP salary soon brought Ed back to Europe, where he became Time's bureau chief in Rome.
Even in his retirement in New York, Ed reads six newspapers a day to stay on top of the news. He is proud of his award from the NC Journalism Hall of Fame in Chapel Hill, where his picture is on the wall at the UNC-CH School of Journalism in Howell Hall.
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R. Edward Jackson (1995)
Ed Jackson's remarkable journalism career began at age 12, when he produced a neighborhood mimeographed daily newspaper, The Daily Journal, in his native Mount Airy, N.C. In high school, he wrote sports and news for the Mount Airy News and Mt. Airy Times and was a sportswriter and news stringer for the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel.
That experience, coupled with a three-year Pacific stint in the Navy, led him to become a foreign newswriter for United Press in 1947. He covered British news as a correspondent in London and edited international news that went through the London office. He moved to Italy in 1953 to run the UP bureau in Rome, where he covered Italian news and the Vatican.
Time magazine hired him in 1957. During his 29 years with Time, he was a contributing editor, news editor, Rome bureau chief, Washington news editor and the magazine's first international editor. He left Time in 1986 as deputy chief of correspondents and was later named editor-in-chief of World Press Review, a 75,000-circulation monthly news magazine consisting of stories from overseas publications. He retired in 1991.
He established the Edward Jackson International Scholarship in the UNC-CH School of Journalism and Mass Communiation in 1992. The endowment provides funds for a news-editorial student, preferably from North Carolina, to travel to a country in Europe to learn about its politics, culture and mass media by living and working there.
Jackson graduated cum laude with a bachelor's in history from Washington and Lee University.
He has served as vice president of the Overseas Press Club and vice president and secretary of The Correspondents Fund, which provides scholarship funds to needy journalists and students.
Source: UNC's School of Journalism Web Site -- Journalism Hall of Fame
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Source: "Mrs. Reid Jackson, Civic Leader Since (cut off)," article by Eleanor Powell, The Mount Airy News, Tuesday, February 24, 1976.
According to her son Ed, Annie Britton Jackson was an omniverous reader, was interested in politics and foreign affairs, and loved to argue with younger people. She taught arts and crafts and entered her flowers in local shows and the annual fair. Her love of travel influenced her son's interest in what went on in other parts of the world. The family traveled to the "New England states," as she put it, to Ohio, Niagara Falls, Quebec, Maine, and New York. On family visits to Norfolk, they took side trips to Washington and Williamsburg. They visited Andrew Jackson's home in Tennessee and went to Georgia to visit Aunt Jennie and Betty. Ed recalled two humorous incidents from such family trips. In Massachusetts they pulled over to ask a passerby how to get to Plymouth. Not understanding their Southern accent, the man repled, "Quarter to three!" Once in Washington, DC, Ed's aunt Sarah (Tory) drove the car round and round DuPont circle, tryuing to figure out how to get to their hotel; meanwhile Grandma Britton was standing in front of the hotel, frantically waving her hands at them.
Ed recalled being spanked by his mother once at Grandma Jackson's house for declaring at the table that he didn't like a particular food item. He learned Southern manners quickly.
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Source: "Jackson Brothers Founded in 1916," article from The Mount Airy News (date after 1991).
Reid Jackson's son Ed recalled that his father spent many hours at the store, which was open six days a week. He often worked nights and then went to the store early the next morning to sweep up, because the young people didn't clean to suit him. Reid supervised the shoe department while his brother Andrew did the books.
Andrew's son Joe was in charge of men's clothing and later did the bookkeeping.
While brother Andrew was a good businessman, "Dad was a great listener," said Ed.
As he sat on his front porch, women from town would drop by to tell him their troubles. Ed remembers that Mrs. Mamie Hawks Jackson, who owned a dress shop in Mr. Airy, used to love to talk business with his father. When Reid retired at age 80, friends opined that "he'll be bored," but in reality he was relieved not to have to go to work every day. Reid Jackson owned a farm on US 52 and the Mount Airy-Dobson Road, which he sold over time as lots, except for the farm at the top of the hill, where a tenant grew tobacco and corn. Ed believed that his father could have sold the farm for much more than he eventually did, but his dad seemed satisfied.
Ed recalled that while his mother Annie never hesitated to speak her mind, his dad often withheld his feelings. This reticence was sometimes frustrating to Ed. Once during Ed's post in London with United Press, Annie and Reid visited their son and his young family. They had a grand tour of London, Paris, Brittany, and Amsterdam.
After the trip was over, Ed asked his dad how he liked the trip. Reid repled, "Well, I would like to have gone to Switzerland."
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R. Edward Jackson (1995)
Ed Jackson's remarkable journalism career began at age 12, when he produced a neighborhood mimeographed daily newspaper, The Daily Journal, in his native Mount Airy, N.C.
OBIT...
R. Edward Jackson, a Mount Airy native who oversaw Time magazine's coverage of the Second Vatican Council, spearheaded the development of the magazine's international editions, and was the last managing editor of the Washington Star, died in New York on Feb. 5, of cancer. He was 85. In Mr. Jackson's 44-year career in journalism he worked in the U.S. and Europe at United Press International and Time, and served as editor-in-chief of World Press Review. He was a leading member of the Overseas Press Club and the Correspondents Fund, and endowed journalism scholarships at several universities. In 1995, he was inducted into the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame. Mr. Jackson was born January 14, 1925, in Mount Airy, the son of Robert Reid Jackson, co-owner of Jackson Bros. department store, and Annie Britton Jackson, who resided at 1022 North Main Street. He ran a neighborhood newspaper with a circulation of 200 when he was 12, was a stringer for the Winston-Salem Journal in his teens, and edited school papers in Mount Airy and at Washington and Lee University. He interrupted his education to serve in the Navy for three years at the end of World War II, and graduated from Washington and Lee with a degree in History in 1947. He joined UPI as a foreign news writer in 1947. He worked in UPI's London bureau from 1950 to 1953, and then headed the Rome bureau from 1953 to 1956. He became a writer at Time in New York in 1957. Over the next 29 years, he served as Time's foreign newsdesk editor (1959-62), Rome bureau chief (1963-65), deputy chief of correspondents (1966-72), editor of the international editions (1972-75), Washington news editor (1976-80), managing editor of the Time-owned Washington Star (1980-81), and again as deputy chief of correspondents (1981-86). While Rome bureau chief in the 1960s, Mr. Jackson coordinated Time's coverage of the Second Vatican Council, the death of Pope John XXIII and the election of Paul VI, and Paul VI's unprecedented visit to Israel. In the early 1970s, he headed the team that developed editions of Time geared specifically to readers in Europe, Asia, and Australia, and served as the international editions' first editor. As Washington news editor, he ran the magazine's coverage of the Rerpublican and Democratic conventions of 1976 and 1980. He was appointed managing editor of the Washington Star early in 1981, just months before Time folded the newspaper, bringing its 129-year record of continuous publication to a close. After his retirement from Time in 1986, he served for five years as editor-in-chief of World Press Review, a New York-based monthly digest of selections from newpapers outside the United States, which were hard to obtain in a pre-Internet age. Mr. Jackson donated his services to various journalistic societies, including the Overseas Press Club, where he was vice-president, a member of the board of governors, and chair of the scholarship committee; and the Correspondents Fund, where as trustee, vice-president, and secretary, he helped provide funds for needy journalists and for journalism students. In his later years, he endowed journalism scholarships at Washington and Lee University, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the University of California at Berkeley. Though he lived all his adult life outside North Carolina, Mr. Jackson was a frequent visitor to the state and to Mount Airy, where he had a large and varied family and a long-standing circle of friends. He maintained a lifelong loyalty to North Carolina college sports teams, and enjoyed annual visits to the ACC basketball tournament, as well as drives along the Blue Ridge Parkway, golf at the Mt. Airy Country Club and Cross Creek, and Southern-style cooking wherever he could find it. His first marriage, to Margaret Reid Jackson, ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife of thirty-three years, Kathleen Beakley Jackson of New York City, two sons from his first marriage, Roger Jackson, of Northfield, Minnesota, and Blair Jackson, of Oakland, California, and three grandchildren.