James Parton; Founded American Heritage Magazine

James Parton, founding publisher of American Heritage, the innovative magazine in hardcover book form that chronicled various periods of U.S. history and won a Pulitzer Prize for its “Picture History of the Civil War,” has died. He was 88.

Parton, also founding publisher of Horizon magazine and the 1940s newspaper the Los Angeles Independent, died Friday of a heart attack in White River Junction, Vt., said his son, James Parton III of Mill Valley, Calif.

The eclectic publisher had a lifelong love affair with words. He wrote the annual musical comedy of the Hasty Pudding Club as a Harvard undergraduate, and he was a writer, editor and management assistant for 13 years with Time Inc. Parton later served as president of Encyclopaedia Britannica, head of the National Advertising Review Board, and assistant librarian of Congress. He was the author of the well-received 1986 book “Air Force Spoken Here.”

But Parton’s greatest legacy remains American Heritage, which he founded in 1954 with an investment of $60,000 and sold to McGraw Hill Books in 1970 for $7.5 million.

With two old friends from Time-Life, Joseph J. Thorndike and Oliver Jensen, Parton set out to publish history books in the guise of an advertising-free magazine preserved between hard covers. He hired writer Bruce Catton as a third editor along with Thorndike and Jensen. In addition to covering various periods of history, Parton joined Houghton Mifflin Co. to publish the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.

Born in Newburyport, Mass., and educated at Harvard, he joined Time in 1935, rising to business editor before becoming assistant to the general manager.

To aid the war effort even before the United States entered World War II, Parton took Army training and proposed Time’s first foreign edition, called the Time Air Express, printed on lightweight paper and circulated in South America.

Invited by an Army Air Forces reservist to supply the edition for a base in England being set up by Brig. Gen. Ira Eaker, Parton went along. He became a lifelong friend and ultimately the biographer of Eaker, as well as chief historian of the U.S. air forces, and rose during the war to lieutenant colonel, earning a Legion of Merit, a bronze star and four battle stars.

Decades later, Parton’s wartime experiences would translate into “Air Force Spoken Here,” which a Washington Post critic praised: “Thanks to the author’s deft descriptions, unlabored analyses and brisk narrative style, his chapters on the war years--the heart and bulk of the book--soar like homesick angels.” Parton also served as trustee of the Air Force Historical Foundation and was editor and publisher of “Impact: The Army Air Forces’ Confidential Picture History of World War II” published in eight volumes in 1980.

Immediately after the war, Parton came to Los Angeles for Time, supervising coverage of eight Western states. When Time editor Henry Luce visited, he was startled to find 10 daily newspapers covering the rapidly growing Los Angeles area and suggested that Parton launch one backed by Time Inc.

The result, which swallowed up half a dozen community papers, was the Independent, begun in 1948. The paper thrived for a year, but when advertising revenue slumped in the summer of 1949, Time was asked for further funding and balked. The Independent folded, and Parton was out of a job.

His first wife, Jane, died in 1962. Parton is survived by his second wife, Ruth, a son and a daughter and five grandchildren.