Word: gunther
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John and Frances Gunther's first brush with death came in 1929, when their only daughter Judy died at four months of a glandular ailment. In April 1946 they learned that their only son, then 16, had a brain tumor. For 15 months Johnny, a lively, charming youngster, clung heroically to life and sanity. Though Frances (who now lives in Jerusalem) had divorced Gunther in 1944, they fought an agonizing side-by-side battle for Johnny's life. In desperation they consulted more than 30 doctors, tried such extreme treatments as intravenous mustard-gas injections, which had never...
When Johnny died, his father wrote Death as a private memoir, but was persuaded by friends that it would inspire other parents in similar straits. Gunther has given his $25,000 in royalties from the book to children's cancer research, and Harper's has also contributed its profit. Almost ten years since the book's publication, he still gets 200 letters a year about Johnny from readers all over the world, many enclosing money, pressed flowers or a poem. Gunther and his second wife Jane, whom he married in 1948 (her first husband: Newscaster John...
...Darkening Continent. On the first leg of his 1952 reporting safari for Inside Africa, Gunther awoke to another nightmare: he was going blind. With cataracts closing over both eyes, he explored the darkening continent for 10^ months and 40,000 miles without even a weekend off, ground out nine magazine articles on the road. Unable to read his minute reporter's scribble, he could never have finished the assignment if willowy, tough-fibered Jane had not been along. She scrawled notes on interviews, digested reams of background material, took thousands of photographs for Gunther to pore over back...
...dozen articles for magazines (Look, Reader's Digest) that had helped to bankroll the trip, he was unable to spare six months of his two-year writing time for the two operations that eventually restored almost complete vision through bottle-thick spectacles. Against dwindling sight and funds, Gunther, a hunt-and-peck typist, had his typewriter equipped with outsize keys, used ever stronger eyedrops that enabled him to read and write only for two hours at a stretch. Says Jane: "The house was littered with magnifying glasses...
Name-Wonder. Before going off to the hospital, Gunther gallantly tossed a farewell shindig, insisted on greeting each guest without help, though he almost had to rub noses before he could recognize them. It was a typical gesture. Anything but the traditionally tough, cynical newsman, Gunther fairly quivers with delight at meeting people, deeply craves their approval. Says one intimate: "He has no acquaintances-only best friends...