Dorothy D. Storck, 88, former Inquirer columnist
She shared a Pulitzer for coverage of Three-Mile Island nuclear disaster.
DOROTHY STORCK had this thing about August.
This is what the former Inquirer columnist had to say about August, written on Aug. 31, 1982: "Tomorrow is September. August will be all gone. We can come out of hiding, blink, maybe smile at a neighbor. We can take up our lives again as if August never happened."
Her point was that nothing good ever happened in August. Well, it's true, World War I began in August and Japan was hit by atom bombs in August, but as some readers pointed out, the Japanese surrendered to end World War II on Aug. 15.
And anyway, Dorothy was just having fun, as she often did in her columns for the Inquirer from 1976 through 1987, when her column was distributed to some 250 newspapers nationwide.
Dorothy D. Storck, who also wrote for Chicago newspapers in a career that began in 1965, covering breaking news, writing feature stories and travel articles, a former Air Force officer and Pulitzer Prize winner, died Sunday after a five-year battle with cancer. She was 88 and lived in Chicago.
Dorothy won a number of awards, including sharing the Pulitzer with other Inquirer reporters for coverage of the Three-Mile Island nuclear disaster in 1979. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer for her coverage of the Detroit riots in 1967, and in 1976 for her foreign reporting. She won the Overseas Press Club Award in 1976 for a series on American prisoners trapped in Mexican jails.
A native of Buffalo, N.Y., who grew up in Bronxville, N.Y., Dorothy earned a bachelor's degree in English from Barnard College of Columbia University in 1951, and a master's degree in radio and television journalism from Syracuse University in 1962. She also studied foreign affairs in a three-month program at Cambridge University in England in 1958.
As an Air Force officer, Dorothy was a squadron commander of 400 women at Olmstead Air Force Base in Pennsylvania; an adjutant of a jet maintenance squadron in Alaska; a public relations officer in England; and the chief of public relations for the Secretary of the Air Force, Midwest Office, Chicago. She attained the rank of major.
Dorothy began her journalism career in 1965 as a national reporter and columnist for the Chicago American, which was renamed Chicago Today by its owner, the Chicago Tribune. She covered the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections, the trial of Sirhan Sirhan, who killed Robert F. Kennedy, and the voyages of NASA's Apollo 10, 11 and 13.
After joining the Inquirer as a reporter and feature writer, her column was distributed nationally by the Knight Ridder-New York Daily News-Chicago Tribune wire service. In 1989, she moved to London where she wrote a column on politics and the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for the Inquirer and Knight Ridder wire service.
In 1992, she returned to Chicago and wrote travel stories for the Chicago Sun-Times. She won two reporting prizes from the Society of American Travel Writers.
Dorothy is survived by a brother, Donald Storck; a sister, Patricia Kerr; and her fiance Dick Simpson.
Services: Will be private.