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William S. White won the Pulitzer Prize in 1955 for The Taft Story, a biography of Republican Sen. Robert F. Taft of Ohio who ran for president in 1952. Among White's other works are The Citadel and The Making of a Journalist, both of which are derived from his work as a journalist.
His journalism career led him far from his hometown of De Leon, Texas, where he was born in 1905. White began his journalism career in the 1920s while attending the University of Texas at Austin, where he took courses in the Department of Journalism and worked as a reporter for The Austin Statesman (now the Austin American-Statesman). He went on to become a World War II correspondent, a political reporter and a columnist. White covered Washington and the war for the Associated Press and then joined the New York Times in 1954. In 1958, he left the New York Times to write a syndicated column that appeared in 175 newspapers nationwide.
White died April 30, 1994, after suffering a stroke. He was 88.
Sources: The Associated Press, "William White; Won Pulitzer for Biography," Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1994, A1.