Who was Ernie Pyle?: Overview
About the House
About the house/library
Ernie Pyle traveled throughout the world as a roving columnist for Scripps-Howard newspapers, often alongside his wife, Jerry. Both hailed from the Midwest but chose Albuquerque for a home in 1940 after visiting many times and developing, in Pyle's words, "a deep, unreasoning affection" for New Mexico and befriending Edward Shaffer, editor of the Albuquerque Tribune, and his wife, Liz. The 1,145 square foot house was built to their specifications for $3,848. Wartime travel as a war correspondent kept Pyle far from home for months at a time, and some of his columns mentioned Jerry and the little white house and picket fence back in Albuquerque. Following the deaths of both Pyles in 1945, the home was bequeathed to the City of Albuquerque and opened as the first branch library on October 11, 1948. Ever since, the City has preserved it carefully for the many visitors who stop by from the neighborhood, all the United States, and many other countries. A number of photographs and some memorabilia are on display in the library, including copies of his books and scrapbooks of articles. A memorial, Brave Men by Willard Schroeder, is located on the south lawn, where the grave of the Pyles' dog Cheetah can also be found. In 2006 the Ernie Pyle Library was awarded Historical Landmark Status.
Statute
NEW MEXICO STATUTES AND CODES
Section 12-5-4 - August 3rd designated Ernie Pyle Day.
In appreciation of the splendid work as a writer and war correspondent, and the great credit reflected upon the state of New Mexico by Ernie Pyle, one of her outstanding citizens, his birthday, August 3rd, of each year, is hereby designated as Ernie Pyle Day, upon which appropriate ceremonies shall be held in his honor and in honor of all members of the armed forces of the United States serving so valiantly in the present world war [World War II].
History
A Brief History of Ernie Pyle and His Home in New Mexico
Who Was Ernie Pyle?
Ernest Taylor Pyle was born in Dana, Indiana on August 3, 1900, and grew up on a farm. He enrolled in Indiana University in Bloomington in 1919, where he took journalism classes and was a member of the staff on the college paper. Ernie left school in 1923 to work at a local paper, but he soon moved on to Washington, D.C., beginning a long affiliation with the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain. In 1925, he married Geraldine “Jerry” Siebolds, a Civil Service clerk from Minnesota, and in 1926 they quit their jobs, bought a Ford roadster, and set out to tour the United States, ultimately traveling 9,000 miles in ten weeks.
Once back on the East Coast, Ernie became the aviation editor for the Washington Daily News. His writings on aviation led Amelia Earhart to say “Not to know Ernie Pyle is to admit that you yourself are unknown in aviation.”1 In 1935, Ernie decided to give up his desk job to become a roving columnist for Scripps-Howard newspapers. For five years, he and Jerry (“that girl who rides with me” or “that girl”) crisscrossed the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, and South America, with Ernie submitting columns on diverse topics such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Dionne quintuplets, and the first session of the Supreme Court in their new building, as well as “personal musing, sometimes farfetched whimsy, sometimes side-splitting comedy…”2
After years of enjoying the freedom of the open road, in June of 1940, the Pyles decided to build a home in New Mexico, a state they had visited and liked, as “a sort of home plate”.3 Jerry arrived to start moving into the house in November, the same month Ernie left for England to begin reporting on World War II. Although already famous, it would be his personal, soldier-oriented dispatches from military theaters overseas, read avidly by millions, that brought him the highest acclaim.
By April 1942, Ernie and Jerry, whose marriage had become rocky, had divorced. Ernie was worried about Jerry’s mental and physical well-being and hoped “a fresh start would give [her] strength and interest”.4 Instead, Jerry went into a sanitarium in Colorado and Ernie went back to England, and then to Africa, including Morocco, Tunisia, and the Belgian Congo. He continued to correspond with Jerry, and while he was in Accra in March 1943, Ernie learned that Jerry had remarried him by proxy, a “proposal” he had made the past November, as they both regretted the divorce. There was no time for the couple to rejoice, though, as Ernie joined the Sicilian invasion.
He did not return to New Mexico until autumn, and all too soon he was back in Italy, where he encountered his most famous subject, Captain Henry T. Waskow. In 1944, the year he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished war correspondence, Ernie was back in England to cover D-Day, moving on after the invasion to visit several units at the front before returning home. Jerry had had health problems while he was away, and after spending time with her in Albuquerque, the Pyles left together in December 1944 – Ernie to join American forces in the Pacific, and Jerry to enter a private hospital in California.
Ernie never returned to New Mexico. He was killed by enemy fire on the Island of Ie Shima on April 18, 1945, the 30th American war correspondent to die in WWII. Jerry was back in Albuquerque by this time. She was well enough to attend a memorial service for her husband at UNM in May and went to Washington, D.C. to collect his posthumous Medal for Merit in July, but by autumn, her health had declined, and she died on November 23, 1945.
(1) The Story of Ernie Pyle by Lee G. Miller, p 42
(2) Ibid., p. 56
(3) Ernie Pyle in the American Southwest by Richard Melzer, p 45
(4) Ibid., p. 62
For more information about Ernie Pyle:
- Ernie Pyle Collection The finding aid for this collection is available to view at New Mexico Archives Online. The collection resides at the Special Collections Library, 423 Central NE, Albuquerque, NM 87102.
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- Ernie Pyle Papers at New Mexico Archives Online The collection consists of air mail correspondence and telegrams from Pyle's assignment in Okinawa and from an aircraft cruiser in the Pacific Ocean. Also included are issues from 1967 of the Ryukan Review and Pacific Stars and Stripes. as well as the program for the Community Memorial Service in memory of Ernie Pyle which was held at the University of New Mexico on May 13, 1945
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- America’s Most Loved Reporter: Ernie Pyle Organized by The Albuquerque Museum The Albuquerque Museum presents a compilation of images, documents and memorabilia preserved through the years by the City of Albuquerque’s Cultural Services Department.
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- Ernie Pyle Collection at the Indiana School of Journalism Includes photographs, wartime columns, and more.
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- Ernie Pyle World War II Museum in Dana, Indiana This site is owned and operated by the Friends of Ernie Pyle, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and advancement of Pyle’s legacy in Dana, as well as throughout Indiana and the nation.
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- Ernie Pyle, Gone But Never Forgotten From the National WWII Museum, New Orleans
CSPAN Book TV
Books from the catalog
Here are some collections of Ernie Pyle's writings that can be borrowed from the library.
Brave Men by
Europe was in the throes of World War II, and when America joined the fighting, Ernie Pyle went along. Long before television beamed daily images of combat into our living rooms, Pyle’s on-the-spot reporting gave the American public a firsthand view of what war was like for the boys on the front. Pyle followed the soldiers into the trenches, battlefields, field hospitals, and beleaguered cities of Europe. What he witnessed he described with a clarity, sympathy, and grit that gave the public back home an immediate sense of the foot soldier’s experience. There were really two wars, John Steinbeck wrote in Time magazine: one of maps and logistics, campaigns, ballistics, divisions, and regiments and the other a "war of the homesick, weary, funny, violent, common men who wash their socks in their helmets, complain about the food, whistle at Arab girls, or any girls for that matter, and bring themselves through as dirty a business as the world has ever seen and do it with humor and dignity and courage—and that is Ernie Pyle’s war." This collection of Pyle’s columns detailing the fighting in Europe in 1943–44 brings that war—and the living, and dying, moments of history—home to us once again.
Ernie Pyle's Southwest by
This book is a collection of famed journalist Ernie Pyle's writings about the South West. The roads were bad, and nonexistent in many parts of the SW, when Ernie Pyle made his expeditions into the realm of solitude. The depression was gripping the nation during 1935-39, the period covered by these columns. He had been saddened by the sight of penniless America. Selling Apples, desperately seeking work, drifting from one place to another, blinded by the grip of the dust bowl, beset by cold and hunger in the big city. Ernie Pyle was seeking solace, not alone for himself, but for all Americans. He was a vicarious emissary of the destitute, dreaming of a Valhalla in the promised land. He thought the promised land as a whole, might be in the desert, and that is where he searched for it.
Here Is Your War by
A wonderful and enduring tribute to American troops in the Second World War, Here Is Your War is Ernie Pyle’s story of the soldiers’ first campaign against the enemy in North Africa. With unequaled humanity and insight, Pyle tells how people from a cross-section of America—ranches, inner cities, small mountain farms, and college towns—learned to fight a war. The Allied campaign and ultimate victory in North Africa was built on blood, brave deeds, sacrifice and needless loss, exotic vistas, endurance, homesickness, and an unmistakable American sense of humor. It’s all here—the suspenseful landing at Oran; the risks taken daily by fighter and bomber pilots; grim, unrelenting combat in the desert and mountains of Tunisia; a ferocious tank battle that ended in defeat for the inexperienced Americans; and the final victory at Tunis. Pyle’s keen observations relate the full story of ordinary G.I.s caught up in extraordinary times.
Ernie Pyle in England by
"Last fall when the great air battles were being fought out over England and the first full reality of the bombed torment that was London's came over the cables to us in America, there grew in me an almost overpowering urge to be there amidst it all."
~from the foreword by Ernie Pyle
Ernie's War: The Best of Ernie Pyle's World War II Dispatches by
This first major collection of Pyle's World War II dispatches is drawn from his complete body of work, from the Battle of Britain to the war in the Pacific and includes a fifty page biography of Pyle by David Nichols.
Ernie's America: The Best of Ernie Pyle's 1930's Travel Dispatches by
A companion volume to the highly popular Ernie's War, here is a delightful collection of newspaper columns written during the famed journalist's travels through America from 1935 to 1942.
Home Country by
During the years 1935 to 1940, Ernie and That Girl who rode with him (his wife, Jerry) were crisscrossing North America in search of material for a daily newspaper column. In that period he turned out about a million and a half words. Not all of these are here, but an effort has been made to include his best remembered writings of those years.
People who encountered Ernie's column only during the war years may discover in these pages why it had already become, in peacetime, a daily favorite of millions.
~from the Foreword
Last Chapter by
Author's memories of the last stages of the war in the Pacific area.
Archives
Archival Collection
Special Collections Library holds an archival collection related to Ernie Pyle and the house/library. Archival collections are available for in-house use only.
- Ernie Pyle CollectionThis collection contains materials written by and about Ernie Pyle, a Pulitzer prize winning American journalist who was most famous for his World War II columns from the 1940s. The collection also covers his early days as the “Roving Reporter,” his life in Albuquerque and overseas, and his eventual death in Ie Shima, Okinawa in 1945. There is also much information about various tributes and memorials, which occurred after his death, including the opening of the Ernie Pyle Memorial Branch Library in Albuquerque, NM.
Quote
Why Albuquerque?
"And here are the things we like about living in Albuquerque:
"We like it because we have a country mailbox instead of a slot in the door. We like it because our front yard stretches are far as you can see, and because Mount Taylor, sixty-five miles away, is like a framed picture in our front window.
"...We have seen sunrises so violently beautiful they were almost frightening, and I'm only sorry I can't capture the sunsets and the thunderstorms and the first snows on the Sandias, and take them East and flaunt them in people's faces.
"We like it here because no more than half our friends who write us know how to spell Albuquerque.
"We like it here because we're on top of the world, in a way; and because we are not stifled and smothered and hemmed in by buildings and trees and traffic and people. We like it because the sky is so bright and you can see so much of it. And because out here you actually see the clouds and the stars and the storms, instead of just reading about them in the newspapers. They become a genuine part of your daily life, and half the entire horizon is yours in one glance just for the looking, and the distance sort of gets into your soul and makes you feel that you too are big inside."
~Ernie Pyle for New Mexico magazine, quoted in The Story of Ernie Pyle by Lee G. Miller, p. 157-159
