Legendary Timesman R.W. (Johnny) Apple Jr. has shuffled off this mortal coil.
Quoth the Times’s Todd Purdum:
R. W. Apple Jr., who in more than 40 years as a correspondent and editor at The New York Times wrote from more than 100 countries about war and revolution, politics and government, food and drink, and the revenge of living well, died yesterday in Washington. He was 71.
The cause was complications of thoracic cancer.
With his Dickensian byline, Churchillian brio and Falstaffian appetites, Mr. Apple, who was known as Johnny, was a singular presence at The Times almost from the moment he joined the metropolitan staff in 1963. He remained a colorful figure as new generations of journalists around him grew more pallid, and his encyclopedic knowledge, grace of expression — and above all his expense account — were the envy of his competitors, imitators and peers.
Mr. Apple enjoyed a career like no other in the modern era of The Times. He was the paper’s bureau chief in Albany, Lagos, Nairobi, Saigon, Moscow, London and Washington. He covered 10 presidential elections and more than 20 national nominating conventions. He led The Times’s coverage of the Vietnam War for two and a half years in the 1960’s and of the Persian Gulf war a generation later, chronicling the Iranian revolution in between.
In honor of his passing, I thought I’d point out his superb story about eating in Bangkok that was published this time last year. Don’t miss it.
Apple also penned an article about ten notable restaurants world-wide that was due to appear this fall; it’s been published posthumously.