May 5, 2008
Douglas C. Wilson ’62, longtime Amherst College public affairs officer and editor, died May 5 at his home in Amherst. He was 67. A former Washington journalist, he served his alma mater for 27 years before retiring in 2002.
Prior to joining the college’s administration in 1975, Wilson worked for 13 years as a reporter for The Providence Journal, first in Rhode Island and later as Washington correspondent. On Aug. 7, 1974, he was the first newsperson to report Richard Nixon’s decision to resign as president – a breaking story for which he received the Merriman Smith Memorial Award from the White House Correspondents’ Association.
Wilson edited Passages of Time: Narratives in the History of Amherst College, an anthology of essays on the college’s history, which was published in December 2007 by Amherst College Press. He wrote eight of the 28 essays, most of which appeared in Amherst, the alumni magazine which he had edited.