William Beale Jr., 97; Former Associated Press Bureau Chief in D.C.
William Lewis Beale Jr., 97, chief of the Associated Press Washington bureau from 1948 to 1969 who directed coverage of about a dozen political conventions, died of respiratory failure Sunday in Bethesda, Md.
A Washington, D.C., native and resident, Beale was a political science major at Princeton University.
He joined AP in 1930 and covered some of the biggest stories of the Depression, including the World War I Bonus Marchers convergence on Washington and the 100-day session of Congress during which many of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were passed.
During the early ‘40s, he reported on the strategic wartime conference between Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Quebec and the drafting of the United Nations charter in San Francisco. Beale was news editor in Washington for 12 years before taking over the bureau. He retired in 1969.
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