(2 of 2)
On his recent visit to New York, Atwood told about the most troublesome story he had ever worked on for TIME. It happened near Cordova, Alaska, and involved two boys in a rowboat, who had taken a potshot at an "empty" shed on shore. The shed turned out to be packed with dynamite and was blown skyhigh. Atwood received a long list of questions about the incident. But Cordova was 250 miles and a three-day boat trip away. So he relayed the wire to a friend there, sent the answers back to New York. Discrepancies in the story turned up, and Atwood kept relaying the checking questions to Cordova and the answers to New York, until all the points in dispute had been cleared up. When the story appeared in TIME, it was a four-line item in Miscellany (Dec. 22, 1947).
On still another occasion, when TIME was preparing a story on Alaskan defenses (Nov. 6, 1950), says Atwood: "I got a wire almost a yard long. Some of the information was common knowledge up there, but the answers had to come from the commanding general at headquarters of the Alaskan Command before they could be printed. I knew he wouldn't want to answer them, so I just handed him the wire. When he started to read it, he blew his top. 'They want to know everything,' he roared. But I just kept asking him how to answer it, and he finally gave me a little dope. When the story came out, it had practically all the information he wouldn't give me. TIME sent me a wire explaining that the Pentagon had released it, so I showed it to the general to assure him I hadn't double-crossed him."
Last week, after six weeks of business travel from Washington to San Diego (including conferences on Alaskan statehood, oil development, air transport) and meetings with the Pacific Northwest Trade Association in Tacoma, Atwood was homeward bound. Among his immediate projects: a $50,000 second floor for his newspaper plant.
Cordially yours,