People Remembered: Barrett McGurn

Barrett McGurn

Barrett McGurn, 95, OPC president 1963 to 1965 and a veteran foreign correspondent and government spokesman, died July 2 at his home in Bethesda, Maryland. He had pancreatic cancer.

After graduating from Fordham University in 1935, McGurn worked for the New York Herald Tribune. A soldier during World War II, he was assigned as a correspondent to the Army’s Yank magazine. After the war, he became the Herald Tribune’s bureau chief in Rome and Paris, and he covered the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Changing careers, McGurn became a press attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Rome in 1966, and he was a press officer at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon during the Vietnam War.

He moved to the State Department in Washington in 1969, and served as the first spokesman for the Supreme Court from 1973 to 1982. After retiring in 1982, he was a spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.

McGurn won an OPC Award in 1956 for Best Reporting from Abroad Daily newspaper or wire service (spot news) 1956 for The New York Herald Tribune and wrote five books including memoirs from his three careers: Yank: The Army Weekly: Reporting the Greatest Generation, A Reporter Looks at the Vatican and America’s Court.

See McGurn's appearances on C-SPAN >>