Jack Foisie is an American journalist and author. He was a longtime foreign correspondent and bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.
Background
Jack Foisie was born on April 21, 1919, in Seattle, Washington, United States. He was the son of Francis Patrick and Wynifred Amanda (Shaw) Foisie.
The Foisie family was a force in American journalism for many years. His brother Philip, who died in 1995, had served as an assistant managing editor for The Washington Post for foreign news and as editor for the International Herald Tribune. Their sister, Virginia Foisie, who died in 1996, had been married to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
Education
From 1938 to 1939, Foisie studied at the University of Washington, and at the University of California in Berkeley from 1940 to 1941.
Mr. Foise got his first newspaper job as a sports reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a position he held for a year before joining The Seattle Times. He moved to San Francisco in 1940 for a job at The San Francisco Chronicle, but when World War II broke out, he joined the army. He was a combat soldier in the 1st Armored Division and served in the North Africa campaign. By 1943, he had transferred to The Stars and Stripes newspaper and was reporting on the war as a combat correspondent in North Africa and Italy.
After the war, Mr. Foisie returned to the Chronicle, eventually covering part of the Korean War. In 1962, he traveled to Vietnam on assignment for the Chronicle. Two years later, he was hired by The Los Angeles Times to be the paper's bureau chief in Saigon. His 20-year career with the Times eventually included assignments in the Middle East and Africa, but he was best remembered for his war correspondence from Asia. Mr. Foisie's independent streak as a reporter occasionally got him into trouble with the U.S. military in Southeast Asia.
His accreditation to work in Vietnam was lifted for 30 days by the U.S. military command after officials said he broke an embargo and filed a report on an amphibious Marine landing in Quang Ngai Province. This despite the fact that Mr. Foisie withheld the dispatch for 36 hours after the operation and excluded sensitive information from his report. Four years later, as Bangkok bureau chief, he was still contrasting stated U.S. policy with actual occurences. He reported that U.S. troops were still active in Cambodia several days after President Richard M. Nixon's June 30 deadline for an end to all U.S. ground operations there.
After retiring from the Times in 1984, he continued to write for newspapers and lectured widely on foreign affairs.
Achievements
Foisie was a well-known and talented journalist who was commended for his coverage of Asia. He was awarded the Legion of Merit for accompanying Allied troops on the invasion of Sicily. He also won the Overseas Press Club Award for his reporting in 1966.
((technical guidance for the combat correspondents: Stars ...)
1945
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"Foisie had been a legend among war correspondents, not only in Asia but also in Europe. All the civilians knew about Ernie Pyle, but the guys in the Army knew Foisie." - Robert Gibson
"He was fiercely independent in his thinking on Vietnam and everything else. It made him a marvelous reporter. He was never in anyone’s pocket, not even the U.S. government’s, even though his sister was married to Dean Rusk." - Robert Gibson
"Foisie had talent and an "ephemeral, intuitive sense" to be able to write stories from a soldier’s viewpoint." - Ernie Pyle
Connections
Foisie married Florence Mildred McTighe on April 8, 1944. They had three children: Kathleen Florence, Franklin Sean and Patricia Abbie.
Father:
Francis Patrick Foisie
Mother:
Wynifred Amanda (Shaw) Foisie
Spouse:
Florence Mildred McTighe
child:
Patricia Abbie Foisie
child:
Franklin Sean Foisie
child:
Kathleen Florence Foisie
Brother:
Philip Foisie
Died in 1995
Philip Foisie served as an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post for foreign news and as editor of the International Herald Tribune.
