Ben Robertson

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Journalist, novelist, war correspondent, and author of the renowned Southern memoir Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory (1942). Clemson native, graduate (class of 1923), and writer for The Tiger.

In 1938, Robertson served as a political columnist for the short-lived Clemson Commentator, a semi-weekly that first published on June 6, and ceased printing on July 22, 1938. (1)

An international journalist, Ben Robertson was killed while en route from the United States to his new job, chief of the New York Herald-Tribune's London bureau on February 22, 1943. His aircraft, a Boeing 314, Pan American "Yankee Clipper", NC18603, c/n 1990, (U.S. Navy BuNo 48224), crashes into the Tagus River near Lisbon, while on approach to Portugal by way of the Azores. Caught in a storm, the flying boat wrecked while attempting an emergency landing, having apparently hooked a wingtip on the water on a turn during approach. Also killed is actress Tamara Drasin; actress Jane Froman is seriously injured. Her story of survival will be made into the 1952 film "With a Song in My Heart" starring Susan Hayward.

[edit] Source

(1) "South Carolina Newspapers", compiled and edited by John Hammond Moore, University of South Carolina Press, 1988, Library of Congress card number 88-4779, page 191.

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