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William Stone ’22

William Stone ’22, December 3, 1993, in Annapolis, Maryland. After graduating from Reed with a degree in economics, he studied for a year at the London School of Economics. William was a freelance journalist in Europe in the early ’20s and interviewed Adolf Hitler when he was beginning his political career in Munich. In 1925, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he was a freelance journalist and director of the Washington Bureau of the Foreign Policy Association. He was vice president of that association from 1933 to 1941. During World War II, he was director of the Economic Warfare Division at the U.S. Embassy in London. He also served on the Board of Economic Warfare and Foreign Economic Administration and was a member of the U.S. Joint Intelligence Committee. After the war, William continued to serve with the State Department, first as the first postwar director of the U.S. Information Service and head of the Office of Information and Cultural Affairs, and then as special assistant and deputy to the assistant secretary of state for public affairs. In 1952, he returned to freelance writing. He was an economic consultant and writer for a variety of public and private institutions, and became senior associate of Economic Associates in Washington, D.C. William also began writing extensively about recreational boating and became the Washington correspondent for Yachting magazine. He was the author of several cruising guides, including A Cruising Guide to the Chesapeake, published in 1961 and revised in 1968, and A Cruising Guide to the Caribbean, published in 1976. He retired in the late 1980s, but continued to work on revisions of his cruising guides. He was a member of the Cruising Club of America, past president of Historic Annapolis, and a member of the National Press Club and the Ethical Culture Society. William married Grace Linklater ’21 in 1925, after she completed her studies at the Oregon Medical School. She died in 1964. He later married Jean B. Patterson, who died in 1986. Survivors include a son, a daughter, four grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Appeared in Reed magazine: February 1994

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