Albert B. Southwick

Telegram & Gazette

Albert B. Southwick is a treasure, a man of letters who thinks and cares deeply, whose editorials and bylined perspectives have appeared in the editorial pages of the Telegram & Gazette over a span of more than 60 years, and whose work has also appeared in publications ranging from editorials in The Saturday Evening Post to “Topics of the Times” in The New York Times. He has also published 14 books and co-authored two opera librettos. His first story appeared in the Worcester Telegram in the summer of 1941, and his newspaper career might have blossomed then, but Pearl Harbor would change everything. After four years of service in the Navy during World War II, he earned his master’s degree and worked briefly as a reporter for the Providence Journal. He returned to the Worcester Telegram in 1952 as an editorial writer eventually becoming the chief editorial writer. He worked in that role until his retirement in 1986. But “retirement” did not mean an end to writing – at age 96, he still writes a weekly column for the newspaper.