[Jeanet] Halberstam killed in car accident after lecture to journalism students

[John Henningham]

San Francisco Chronicle <http://sfgate.com/chronicle/>


  DAVID HALBERSTAM: 1934-2007
  Author was on his way to an interview


    He was to meet with Y.A. Tittle to talk about football

John Coté, Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writers 
<mailto:jcote at sfchronicle.com>

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam was killed Monday 
doing what he had done for more than four decades: chasing down a great 
story.

Halberstam, 73, died in a car wreck just a few miles away from a 
long-sought interview for a book he was planning about a legendary 1958 
football game. Driving the author was a UC Berkeley journalism graduate 
student drawn by the chance to spend time alone with a living legend.

Menlo Park police are still probing the cause of the fiery three-car 
accident that injured two others. Halberstam, of New York, was in the 
front passenger seat of a car that was broadsided as it was making a 
left turn off the westbound Bayfront Expressway, which connects to the 
Dumbarton Bridge, onto Willow Road about 10:35 a.m., authorities said.

The car in which Halberstam was riding, an older-model Toyota Camry, was 
hit by a late-model Infiniti. When paramedics and fire crews arrived, 
they found Halberstam unresponsive and trapped in his seat, said Harold 
Schapelhouman, chief of the Menlo Park Fire District.

The engine compartment was on fire, and the passenger side of the car 
had been crushed, Schapelhouman said.

A rescue crew member was able to pull Halberstam from the car while 
another doused the flames, the chief said. The author had no pulse and 
was not breathing when he was freed, and efforts to revive him were 
unsuccessful, Schapelhouman said. Halberstam was pronounced dead at the 
scene.

The author appears to have died of massive blunt-force trauma, but an 
autopsy scheduled for today should confirm the cause of death, said 
Kristine Gamble, senior deputy coroner for San Mateo County.

Police declined to say who may have been at fault in the crash. Cars 
turning left at the intersection onto Willow Road may proceed only when 
they have a green arrow.

The Infiniti driver suffered minor injuries, and the driver of a Nissan 
coupe that apparently was hit by one of the other cars was unhurt, 
authorities said.

The Berkeley graduate student driving the Camry, Kevin Jones, suffered a 
punctured lung and was taken to Stanford Hospital.

"It's just a really hard time for him. He's feeling really sad and 
freaked out," his wife, Lily Jones, said by telephone from the 
hospital's emergency room. "It's just a very traumatizing thing to have 
gone through."

She said she had not discussed the accident with him in detail.

Halberstam was in the Bay Area to deliver a speech at UC Berkeley about 
what it means to turn reporting into a work of history, said Orville 
Schell, dean at Berkeley's graduate school of journalism.

Halberstam won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 at age 30 for his reporting 
from Vietnam. He later turned to long-form writing and wrote 21 books, 
including "The Best and the Brightest," about how the United States 
became involved in Vietnam. His other works covered a wide range of 
subjects, including civil rights, sports and the auto industry.

But Halberstam's own journalistic career was anything but history, said 
John Eckhouse, a member of the journalism school's alumni board, which 
arranged the event this past Saturday.

"He had just finished the galleys on Thursday for his latest book, on 
the Korean War," Eckhouse said. "He spent Saturday in his room at the 
faculty club. He said if he could come over to our (afternoon) event he 
would, but he had some editing to do, some writing to do."

Halberstam's Saturday evening speech was a rousing success, Schell said, 
with a packed house of journalists and members of the public.

"He was speaking about the need for passion to be a journalist, and the 
importance of it to the whole healthy functioning of the American 
political experiment," Schell said. "I think those two things were what 
made him something of an evangelist to the role of the journalist in our 
society."

Afterward, Schell said, he and Halberstam dined at Berkeley's Chez 
Panisse, talking late into the night about the parallels between the 
wars in Vietnam and Iraq.

Over the years, Halberstam had developed a habit of alternating weighty 
historical books with sports books, and he planned to follow up his 
Korean War book with a work about the 1958 NFL championship game between 
the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts, often called football's 
greatest game.

The game, won by the Colts in overtime, is widely regarded as having 
contributed to pro football's modern popularity.

In his typically careful preparation, Eckhouse said, Halberstam had 
tracked down former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Y.A. Tittle, who did 
not play in the championship but who had played the Colts two weeks 
before. Halberstam hoped to gain insights into the play of Colts 
quarterback Johnny Unitas.

To get to the interview, Schell said, Halberstam approached the 
journalism school's students, seeking a driver and offering unique 
compensation, as described in an e-mail from the school to the students: 
"He said he'll give you a private seminar on the way back. Details are 
vague, but this could be a really cool opportunity."

Kevin Jones, a student whose resume already included awards from stints 
as a freelancer and at several small publications, had seized on that 
chance to have some face time with a journalistic icon, his wife said.

"He just wanted to get a chance to talk to somebody that he thought was 
interesting," Lily Jones said. "He doesn't have class on Mondays, and he 
thought this would be great opportunity."

Tittle said he was in his Mountain View insurance office waiting at 11 
a.m., when he expected Halberstam would arrive. At 12:30, he said, his 
secretary came in and said he might as well go to lunch.

"I thought maybe something had come up with his family," a shocked 
Tittle said Monday evening. "He was only 2 miles away, 3 miles away."

/E-mail the writers at jcote at sfchronicle.com 
<mailto:jcote at sfchronicle.com> and mstannard at sfchronicle.com 
<mailto:mstannard at sfchronicle.com>./

This article appeared on page *A - 4* of the San Francisco Chronicle

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