Penn Kimball ’37

Penn Kimball died Nov. 8, 2013, in Chevy Chase, Md.

An Eagle Scout, Penn joined the class from the Lawrenceville School, where he was “head boy.” He played football and was editor of The Daily Princetonian. A Rhodes scholar, he studied politics and economics at Oxford University.

During World War II, Penn joined the Marine Corps, separating as a captain. In the 1940s and ’50s he worked as a journalist at Time, The New York Times, and CBS-TV, notably for its Omnibus series. In 1959 he became a professor at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.

In the 1980s, he learned through the Freedom of Information Act that he and his wife, Janet, had been declared national-security risks in government files peppered with misinformation and unnamed sources. He sued the government, and a Connecticut senator and federal judge reading the files cleared both his name and his wife’s. Penn told the story in his 1983 book, The File.

Penn wrote other books on politics and urban planning. Janet died in 1982 after 35 years of marriage.

To Penn’s second wife, Julie, and his two daughters, the class extends sympathy.