John Lenhart Wilhelm III

John Lenhart Wilhelm, III, a journalist who played a pivotal role in TIME magazine's coverage of the Vietnam War and the race to the moon and was also an Emmy-nominated executive producer of PBS television documentaries, died August 21, 2025 at his home in Washington, DC. He was 87.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his wife Sally Squires Wilhelm.

Mr. Wilhelm excelled at reporting whether gathering news about the bloody battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam and the Muddy Water Navy, the 1968 crash of a B-52 carrying four nuclear bombs in Greenland, the race to the moon or parapsychology, a vast topic that combined science and national security, prompting him to write a book: The Search for Superman: An Extraordinary Journey of Psychic Exploration in 1976.

He arrived at TIME magazine in 1961, shortly after serving as an aviation intelligence officer in the Navy where he planned bombing raids during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1959, he graduated from Princeton University, majoring in English with additional work in chemistry, physics and math.

As the Natonal Science Correspondent at TIME, he covered all manned and unmanned space flights, and wrote extensively about science, technology and medicine. He reported the magazine's first cover story on environmental pollution, covered the shooting at Kent State University and the Presidential Commission on Campus Unrest as well as the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg's arrest among other stories

John Lenhart Wilhelm, III was born in St. Petersburg, FL on March 5, 1938—to John Lenhart Wilhelm, II and Elizabeth Whitfield Wilhelm. His father ran the Wilhelm Funeral Home, which had been founded by his father and was the first funeral home in St. Petersburg.

Sailing and tennis were life-long past-times at which he excelled, winning sailing races and becoming a Florida state tennis champion in high school. He worked at the St. Petersburg Times for a summer stint after college before joining the TIME staff. After TIME, he became managing editor of Science 80, a national science magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, then moved to freelance science writing, where he profiled physicist Stephen Hawking before he was a household name and segued into television production.

Comet Halley, a PBS documentary narrated by James Earl Jones, was nominated for an Emmy. He also worked on Planet Earth; the Emmy-award winning My Heart, Your Heart with Jim Lehrer, on Two Cheers for the CIA, a WGBH/PBS program and Triumph at Carville, A Tale of Leprosy in America which was produced with his wife, Sally.

His marriage to Susan Gregory ended in divorce. He married Sally Squires, also a journalist in 1983. His other survivors include two sons from his first marriage—Eric and Ian Wilhelm—and Colin Wilhelm, from his second marriage, along with six grandchildren.

Funeral services are scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday, September 19 at Christ Church, Georgetown, 3110 O Street, NW, Washington, DC 20007.