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In turn, Henry was the Times's first Sunday editor, an early movie columnist, automotive reporter, aeronautical expert. As a radio announcer he covered national political conventions and the Olympic games. In 1939, when a Times columnist, the late E. V. Durling, defected to another paper, Henry was summoned home from his job as foreign correspondent, and his columnar career began.
Better Starvation Than Ham. For 15 years, until his long-suffering wife Corinne objected, he produced seven col umns every week. Then he dropped back to five and took on TV assignments to occupy this unaccustomed leisure. Such duty does not entirely please him. "All the stuff those Bobbsey Twins said," he complained of Huntley and Brinkley's TV coverage of the political conventions, "came from people like me. I'd rather starve to death as a news paperman than get rich as a ham."
Some Times men are at a loss to explain Columnist Henry's undiminished popularity. "As far as I can tell," says a colleague, "Henry has no redeeming quality — as a columnist, that is. Personally, he's the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet." Times Editor Nick Wil liams, however, does not share this view. "More than any other person now living," Williams says, "Bill Henry is identified by Times readers with the Times."
"I suppose it's something to get people to read you for 25 years," Henry himself says of his career. "The great danger when you get to my age is that you're famous because of your age. But I write for today and tomorrow, rather than yesterday."