Loudon Wainwright Jr.

(1924 - 1988)

Loudon Wainwright Jr. joined Life as an office boy in 1949 and quickly became a reporter, covering the Vietnam War and John Glenn’s orbit of Earth. In 1964 he started his column The View from Here; except during the magazine’s hiatus, between 1972 and 1978, he continued to write it until he died. “In Life’s best years, there was always a sense of expectancy,” he wrote in a history of the magazine and of his time there, “as if huge surprises were lurking and plans could suddenly and marvelously change without notice—which they often did.”