David Halberstam

David Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who chronicled the Vietnam War generation, civil rights and the world of sports, was killed in a car crash Monday, his wife and local authorities said. He was 73. Halberstam, of New York, was a passenger in a car that was broadsided by another vehicle in Menlo Park, south of San Francisco, San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said. The cause of death appeared to be internal injuries, he said. The accident occurred around 10:30 a.m., and Halberstam was declared dead at the scene, Menlo Park Fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman said. The driver of the car carrying Halberstam and the person driving the car that crashed into his were injured, but not seriously. Halberstam was being driven by a graduate journalism student from the University of California, Berkeley, which had hosted a speech by the author Saturday night about journalism and what it means to turn reporting into a work of history. They were headed to an interview he had scheduled with Hall of Fame quarterback Y.A. Tittle. Halberstam was working on a book, "The Game," about the 1958 NFL championship between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants, often called the greatest game ever played, said his wife, Jean Halberstam. She said she would remember him most for his "unending, bottomless generosity to young journalists." "For someone who obviously was so competitive with himself, the generosity with other writers was incredible," she said. In an interview earlier this month with The Associated Press, Halberstam recalled the zeal with which he and his colleagues covered Vietnam. "Maybe we were 28, 29, 26 and we had a great story, which we knew and we had a lock on the truth because we had such great sources. When for a variety of reasons -- a flawed, deeply flawed policy -- the government starts lying, that is when independent journalism really matters," he said. Such reporting, he said, is a key component of democracy. "The idea that somewhere before it is a big story that there is some young person ... putting themselves on the line morally, ethically, journalistically, that is a great thing," Halberstam said. "I mean, that is what a free society is about." As word of Halberstam's death spread, tributes and remembrances poured in for the veteran reporter whose baritone matched the heft of his nonfiction narratives. "He was a dear friend," said author Gay Talese, who was at the Halberstams' home Monday night and was best man at his wedding. Halberstam was born April 10, 1934, in New York City to a surgeon father and teacher mother. His father was in the military, and Halberstam moved around the country during his childhood, spending time in Texas, Minnesota and Connecticut. He attended Harvard University, where he was managing editor of the Harvard Crimson newspaper. He launched his career in 1955 at the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Miss. He spent only a year there because the editor at the time thought Halberstam was too liberal, said Bill Minor, the Jackson, Miss., bureau chief for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. Minor remained friends for decades with Halberstam, who he said was not afraid to wear his social conscience on his sleeve. Halberstam went on to The Tennessean, in Nashville, where he covered the civil rights struggle, and then The New York Times, which sent him to Vietnam in 1962 to cover the growing crisis there. In 1964, when Halberstam was 30, he and Malcolm W. Browne, of the AP, won Pulitzers for their coverage of the war and the overthrow of the Saigon regime. Halberstam later said he initially supported the U.S. action there but became disillusioned. That was apparent in his 1972 best-seller, "The Best and the Brightest," a critical account of U.S. involvement in the region. Neil Sheehan, former Saigon bureau chief for United Press International and author of "A Bright Shining Lie," a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the war, recalled how Halberstam once called a general at home to get permission to fly to the site of a U.S. defeat. At a briefing the next day, a brigadier general scolded "pitiful, lowly young reporters" for having the temerity to call a general at home. "General, you do not understand," Halberstam responded, according to Sheehan. "We are not corporals. We do not work for you. ... We will call a commanding general any time at home we need to get our job done." The general was flabbergasted, Sheehan said. Halberstam "stayed the course and he kept the faith in the belief in the people's right to know," said George Esper, who spent 10 years in Vietnam with the AP and was Saigon bureau chief when the city fell. "In the end, and I think we can all be very proud of this, he was proven right. The bottom line was that David was more honest with the American public than their own government." Halberstam quit daily journalism in 1967 and wrote 21 books covering topics such as foreign policy, civil rights and a baseball pennant race. His 2002 best-seller, "War in a Time of Peace," was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction. Halberstam's reporting from Vietnam was a major irritant to the Kennedy administration, which had tried unsuccessfully to pressure the Times to transfer him from the war zone. Speaking at a journalism conference last year in Tennessee, he said government criticism of news reporters in Iraq reminded him of how he was treated while covering the war in Vietnam. "The crueler the war gets, the crueler the attacks get on anybody who doesn't salute or play the game," he said. "And then one day, the people who are doing the attacking look around, and they've used up their credibility." ------ Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Kim Curtis and Brian Melley in San Francisco, Dino Hazell and Richard Pyle in New York, Glen Johnson and Howard Ulman in Boston, and Chris Talbott in Jackson, Miss.