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Dear Colleagues:
It's hard to believe, but Myron Belkind is retiring. It's an end of an era. Forty years as a reporter, editor and AP executive on three continents. He was in charge of two of AP's largest and most important operations on both sides of the planet. First in London and then in Tokyo since 2001. Myron spent half his career in Britain, where he arrived in 1977 to serve first as assistant and then chief of bureau and managing director of The Associated Press Ltd., AP's subsidiary in the United Kingdom. In that position, Myron directed AP's largest news, photos and communications hub outside the United States. With a well-balanced mix of personality and charm, he mingled easily with publishers and editors, politicians and royalty. And when he wasn't in the role of AP executive, he was driving himself about town in his own distinctive London taxi. Dressed in his trademark double-breasted suits, Myron's role each day could switch by the hour -- reporter, news and photo editor, salesman, personnel manager, real estate broker, union negotiator, communications expert, diplomat and attentive host. Colleagues admired his pressure cooker work ethic and an ability to never be at a loss for words, whether for a news story, a newspaper contract, or in debate over company policy. Lou Boccardi once described him as an "enduringly youthful whirlwind." His years with AP began in 1962 as a vacation relief on the General Desk in New York while studying at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. After a year working for AP in Southeast Asia while on a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, he was drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in Vietnam. He was assigned to the information staff of the Military Assistance Command, returning to New York to join AP's World Service desk in 1966. Early on, his superiors recognized him as a "star performer," as "an editor of unusual ability" and as a "reporter and writer of great productivity." By the end of 1966 he was on his way to New Delhi, then to Kuala Lumpur as correspondent from 1967 to 1968 and then returned to India as bureau chief. During a decade in India, he covered a wealth of major news events, including the India-Pakistan War of 1971 and the 1975-77 Indian State of Emergency. It was also in India that he met his wife, Rachel. They have two children, a daughter, Yael, and a son, Joshua. "One does not go into journalism to get rich monetarily, but the rewards are far greater than anything that money can buy," Belkind wrote recently in Number 1 Shimbun, the newspaper of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, of which he is president. "What other profession could enable someone like me, the son of a Russian immigrant to the United States, to go on to report (in order of assignments) from the Philippines, Malaysia, Burma, Borneo, Indonesia, Singapore, India, Sikkim, Bhutan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, England and Japan?" Myron, on behalf of everyone at The Associated Press, I want to say thank you for your monumental contributions to this company and we all wish you and Rachel the very best retirement. Well deserved. JMD (Feb.9, 2004) Related articles: |
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