In Cairo in 1954, New York Times reporter Ken Love poked his camera through a tiny hole in an archaeological excavation near the Great Pyramid of Giza, enabling him to send photos of a newly discovered boat, unseen by humans in 4,550 years, that was built to carry the spirit of the pharaoh Cheops to the underworld.
A year earlier in Tehran, Ken covered a coup in which the CIA, unbeknownst to Ken, engineered decrees signed by Shah Pahlavi calling for replacement of Iran’s democratically elected prime minister. Ken’s 1969 book, Suez: The Twice-Fought War, grew from his coverage of the 1956 Suez Canal crisis.
None of which surprises those who encountered Ken’s penetrating mind in R.P. Blackmur’s creative writing classroom in 1942. Nor does his wartime service as a Naval Air Corps pilot.
Ken later taught journalism in Cairo and served in the Peace Corps. Respiratory failure took his life May 13, 2013.