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Name: William Mitchell
Degree and Year: BJ '48
City and State: Hillsborough, N.C.
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William Mitchell, BJ '48
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Many young men attend the University of Missouri School of Journalism immediately after high school, hoping to begin their journalism careers as soon as possible. However, some delay that journey for various reasons, such as military duty. William Mitchell did not let his service in World War II hinder his education and career goals, and he continues to be grateful for the unexpected adventures he underwent during that delay.
Mitchell experienced the pilot training crunch of World War II firsthand. He went to Texas expecting to fly fighter planes or dive bombers, but he ended up flying airborne troops into combat during the war in Europe.
Throughout flight training and his time overseas, Mitchell wrote letters home to Kirkwood, Mo., where his mother preserved every one. The letters described in detail his ups and downs as a student pilot. Mitchell has filled in from memory what he couldn't write about in Europe because of censorship.
Those letters were recently published as Mitchell's memoir by Texas A&M University Press. The book, titled "From the Pilot Factory, 1942," chronicles the inside story of pilot training in wartime and of combat operations in France and the Low Countries as Mitchell observed them.
Following the war, Mitchell and several others in his cadet class went on to attend the University of Missouri. He recalls several memories of his time at the University, such as attending free pledge dinners at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon house. He never joined a fraternity but enjoyed a standing invitation to pledge dinners; the chapter president was an old friend from Mitchell's aviation cadet days.
Mitchell values the knowledge he gained at the University, but he admits that he and his war veteran friends sometimes enjoyed relaxing and feeling like kids again.
"Bob Nash (an ex-Navy pilot) and I both wrote our term papers on The Kansas City Star. We took our typewriters out to the Hinkson, figuring the peace and quiet would help us concentrate. We also took some beer. We took turns reading our opening paragraphs to each other. They were, of course, stilted, windy, totally high-schoolish paragraphs. Pretty soon we were rolling on the ground with laughter, like the guys at the end of Treasure of the Sierra Madre when the wind blows their gold dust away. Eventually we straightened up, finished our papers and turned them in before the deadline."
After graduating from the J-School in 1948, Mitchell went to work for the Evansville (Ind.) Press for three years. He traveled the newspaper's 16-county circulation area looking for feature stories. The young author's proudest day came when he was honored by Robert Ruark, one-time famous columnist, who chose three of Mitchell's features to spin into national stories for his column.
"I got to travel with him all day and watch him interview the same people I had interviewed," Mitchell recalls. "My feet never touched the ground that whole day."
In 1951, during the Korean Conflict, Mitchell was recalled into the Air Force. After two years flying C-46s, he returned to civilian life as a PR writer for TEMCO Aircraft Corporation in Dallas. In 1954, he accepted a position as a writer at Tracy-Locke, a Dallas advertising agency that at the time was the largest in the South. He later became VP and copy chief of the organization.
Mitchell left that agency in 1968 to become executive VP and creative director for Wyatt and Williams in Dallas, the Southwest office of a New York-based advertising agency. Three years later Mitchell and an associate established an ad copy and concept studio which served a number of agencies in Dallas. That enterprise ended with the death of the associate in 1979. Mitchell then was employed as a writer by several agencies until he retired in 1992 at the age of 70.
Considering his successful career, Mitchell notes that some things have in fact changed in the advertising and reporting industries.
"The advertiser today has more control over the media than used to be the case," Mitchell believes. "The media today is less objective and public-spirited than it used to be."
Currently, Mitchell resides in Hillsborough, N.C., where he doesn't forget his experiences at the J-School.
"I live just a few miles north of Chapel Hill, where they turn out good young journalists in something like the tradition of the Missouri School of Journalism," Mitchell says. "I've always been happy to point out that I got my start at Mizzou's J-School and I seldom miss an opportunity to do so."
Until he started putting together his memoir, Mitchell occasionally wrote feature stories for newspapers in Raleigh and Durham. His wife, Marion Davies, was formerly principal cellist with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
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