Dates

• Existence: 1895-1981

Biography

John Milton Henry was born in 1895 on a farm in Silver Creek Township, Pottawattamie County, Iowa. He attended elementary and high school in Macedonia, Iowa, and as a child, published a newspaper, hand-printed on ruled paper. While still in high school, he became a correspondent for a Council Bluffs paper. After high school, he attended the University of Kansas where, as a special student, he finished the journalism program in three years. He returned to Macedonia to operate a one-man newspaper, but after a year joined the staff of the Council Bluffs Nonpareil. He stayed there thirteen years, eventually becoming a manager, and then became managing editor for several radio stations in the Council Bluffs area. He joined the WWII effort late but, because of his managerial experience, he was assigned to head the personnel board at Camp Colt, on the battlefield at Gettysburg. Here he worked in a tank corps under the indirect supervision of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Active in Republican politics, Henry was involved in the Taft and Wilkie campaigns. Because of his radio, newspaper, and political activities, he knew a large number of people and was hired by the Des Moines Register to do public relations work as their Public Affairs Editor. Part of Henry's job was to counter a perception that there was an antagonistic relationship between the Register and the smaller papers in the state. One of the ways Henry accomplished this was to print columns made up of items taken from small town newspapers. In the process, he became recognized as an expert on column writing and eventually co-authored, with Olin Hinkle, a college textbook on the topic. (How to Write Columns, Greenwood Press, 1952). He was also a syndicated columnist and roving correspondent for Drew Pearson's "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column. While at the Register, he became acquainted with Jay N. "Ding" Darling, the Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist. Henry was involved in the publishing of several books of Darling's cartoons, including Ding's Half Century and As Ding Saw Hoover. Henry died June 6, 1981 in Des Moines.

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