AP News, October 30th, 2007
American journalist Harry W. Morgan, who interviewed Mother Teresa, John F. Kennedy and Indira Gandhi and taught generations of journalists, died Tuesday. He was 73.
Morgan died of a heart attack in Timisoara, Romania, three weeks after he was admitted to a hospital with breathing problems, his son Benny said.
During a nearly 50-year journalism career working for Reader's Digest, Morgan went to more than 100 countries and interviewed many notables, among them Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Elvis Presley and Ernest Hemingway.
In 1961, he founded the World Press Institute, which provides fellowships to allow foreign journalists to live and work in the United States. He also founded the Friendship Ambassadors Foundation, which promotes cultural exchanges.
Morgan moved to Romania in 1994, when the government invited him to help develop journalism schools at the universities of Bucharest, Sibiu and Timisoara. For the past 11 years he lived in Timisoara, where he taught at the university.
Morgan first came to Romania in the 1970s, when he interviewed communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. His visit resulted in Romanian-American cultural exchanges.
"Harry was a firm believer in the need for understanding between people of all nations, and in establishing the World Press Institute he sought to build a multiplier effect by exposing foreign journalists to the United States, 'warts and all' as he put it," said Claude E. Erbsen, a member of the World Press Institute's board of directors and a retired vice president of The Associated Press.
Benny Morgan said his father began all his courses with a sentence that summed up his creed: "As a journalist, you can make a difference in your life and the lives of others".
Morgan is survived by his wife, Margareta, and four sons.
