[Walter Sullivan wasn't able to attend the awards ceremony at the 1996 annual NASW banquet. but David Perlman, the only previous recipient of the NASW award for a distinguished career in science journalism, was there to pay him tribute. Here are Perlman's remarks that night, lightly edited for publication. Extensive interviews with Sullivan were published in the Summer and Fall 1995 issues of ScienceWriters.]
Walter Sullivan of the New York Times practically invented the International Geophysical Year, has done more reporting trips from pole to pole, won more awards for journalism and deadline science writing than any ten of us and keeps refurbishing his seven books and writing for the Times long after he was supposed to have retired. His editors simply can't stop him.
Sully is a hell of a writer and a hell of a cellist. He also knows every scientist in the world and since they kept giving him exclusive stories, reading the Times when Sully was working full time was a painfully embarrassing experience for those of us who were scooped almost daily by the gangling guy from the Times.
Covering stories with him was also an edifying experience. He never stops working, but also he never stops playing. At one meeting at the Harriman estate, I came back late one night to a room I was sharing with him and had to climb over him because he was sawing away on his damned cello. On the other hand, one late night in China, after a group of us had spent a wearying day learning about an upsurge in cancer rates in Southeastern China, we tried to convince Sully not to file until we got home, figuring it was only a feature story. We all went out for dinner and a few drinks, came back about midnight, passed Walter's room and heard him shouting into the telephone: "No, dammit, it's nasopharyngeal cancer, N-A-S-O-P-H-A..." This at midnight! In Beijing one night, Walter and his wife, Mary, were whisked away to dine with Madame Sun Yat-Sen, old friends from before the Communist takeover.
Alton Blakeslee tells about the time when he was science editor of the Associated Press and had the bad luck to be bunked in a cabin directly under Sullivan when their ship ran into heavy seas and took on a lot of water. Sullivan's cabin above deck was flooded but not for long. Using his wartime experience on destroyers, Sullivan simply bored a hole in the deck allowing the water to drain on Blakeslee sleeping soundly in the cabin below.
What I admire most about Walter is that he's a reporter's reporter -- scrupulously accurate, erudite -- a real writer, a deadline beater, a global adventurer and on top of that, a scholar. In reviewing a couple of his books, I wrote "What Sullivan did so superbly was to combine authenticity, significant detail, color and human interest in a book that was absorbing for the lay reader and satisfying for scientists... He demonstrates his skill at turning a profound scientific subject into an adventure story of discovery, imagination and even poetry."
But what I envy most is his skill as a con artist. He told me one Spring that he was soon off to Europe with Mary to do a series of articles on astronomy. "Where?" I asked. "Well," he said, "I've planned a kind of astronomic and gastronomic trip." He was going to the Pic du Midi observatory in the Pyrenees and the Geneva observatory in Switzerland, and any other observatory where the food was as good as the astronomy.
Walter, your career has been an inspiration to every science writer I know--including me!
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Walter Sullivan died March 19, 1996 of pancreatic cancer at his home in riverside, Connecticut.