Earl H. Voss, journalist, government official; July 30, 2011

Earl H. Voss, 89, a journalist with the old Washington Star newspaper and a government public affairs officer, died July 30 at Greenspring Village retirement community in Springfield, where he had lived for the past seven years. He had Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.From 1951 until 1964, Mr. Voss wrote foreign news and served as the Star’s diplomatic correspondent.
He won a Washington Newspaper Guild’s “Front Page” award in 1954 for interpretive reporting on the Far East. He was the author of “Nuclear Ambush: The Test Ban Trap” (1963), a book that explored U.S.-Soviet negotiations on nuclear disarmament and resulting implications for national security.

From 1964 to 1970 and again from 1971 to 1976, he worked for the American Enterprise Institute, where he became director of international studies. In 1971, he was a speechwriter and foreign policy adviser to the Senate’s minority whip, Robert P. Griffin (R-Mich.).
He was deputy director for public affairs at the Department of Energy and later the Department of Environmental Protection, from which he retired in 1986.
He was a former president of the State Department’s Correspondents’ Club and a vice president of the Springfield Golf and Country Club.
Earl Herman Voss was born in La Crosse, Wis. He was a reporter and sports editor with the La Cross Tribune as a young man, then during World War II served in the Army as a radar technician and public information officer.

Attribution:Bart Barnes, WaPost

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From his daughter, Martha to the Alumni:
I am the daughter of Earl H. Voss, who was a diplomatic correspondent for the Star, writing about foreign news from 1951-1964. In researching for my Dad's obit, I came across this site. I thought I would let you know that my Dad passed away two weeks ago. He started his writing career at the age of 16 as a sports reporter for the La Crosse Tribune, serving in the U.S. Army as a tech seargent and writiing for the Stars & Stripes during WW II in the Japan theatre. He stayed in Japan and became a public affairs officer and writer in Gen. MacArthur's GHQ in Tokyo, where he met my mother, a civil servant from Boston.

When he returned to the States, he came to Washington, where he worked for the Star, and won the Front Page award for his coverage of the Indo-China War. He covered the U.N., the State Department, and was the first to report during the Cuban missile crisis that the Soviet ships had turned around. He wrote a book called "Nuclear Ambush: The Test Ban Trap," which was reportedly the book Sen. Barry Goldwater kept on his nightstand during his run for the presidency.

No matter what he did later in life -- which was quite a lot -- he always considered himself a newspaperman first. I don't know how many of the alumnae from that era subscribe to your site, but perhaps some of them knew my Dad. I am attaching a letter he wrote to me that I hope you find of interest. It was 1962, and Dad traveled with his friend Dick Fryklund to Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and who knows where else to cover the emerging conflict. As a little girl, I wrote to him, all about the things little girls think about: Where was he? When was he coming home? What would he bring me from Asia? Couldn't he get my brothers, Steve and Pip, to stop teasing me? His reply is attached. I think it is a touching snapshot of the early 60s, and eloquently describes his deep belief in being a newspaperman and what it meant for the world.

(Thanks for your patience with the long note. The letter attached is my re-typing. The original is on air mail paper and a bit faded, with handwritten edits, so it didn't show up too well when I scanned it.)

Best regards,
Martha Voss