William Safire barely finished half of his Syracuse University education before dropping out and starting his career in column writing at the New York Herald Tribune.

Later a Pulitzer Prize recipient for his political commentary in The New York Times, a speech writer for President Richard Nixon and the author of numerous books, he never forgot the university that gave him the finances to attend college. Safire, an SU trustee in his later years, passed away Sunday night at the age of 79.

He is not only remembered for his words and expertise on language usage, but also for his donations to Bird Library and for many memories held by those who knew him at Syracuse.

‘He was, even then, a very good writer. He was quiet, conservative – he was the same person that he became later in life – very unspoiled,’ said friend and classmate Edward Bleier, whom SU’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture is named for.

An English major and originally a member of the Class of ’51, Safire spent his time working for WAER, Bleier said. He and his crew invented a radio show called ‘Say Hello,’ which they broadcasted from different campus buildings.

Safire wrote it, Bleier produced it and Dick Clark was the emcee. Safire’s post-World War II SU was overcrowded, though, with thousands of veterans taking advantage of the GI Bill.

‘He didn’t identify with it,’ Bleier said. So Safire left Syracuse when presented with the opportunity to work at the Herald Tribune in 1949. But without the scholarship money the school gave him, he would have never started college in the first place.

‘Even though he never finished (his education), he often bragged about being one of the better known non-graduates of Syracuse University. He was very grateful to SU,’ said Mary O’Brien, reference archivist for SU Archives.

In 1978 he received an honorary degree and gave the university’s commencement speech – the first of two that he delivered.

He would later donate his personal collection of books and letters to Bird Library and secure funds for a nook of the sixth floor of Bird Library to hold part of his personal book collection. The Safire Room was completed in 1995 and is bordered by shelves of about 1,500 volumes about the Civil War, political history, language usage and a wide array of dictionaries.

Many once read by Safire himself, the books are available to anyone who wants to take them out, said Sean Quimby, director of the library’s special collections and research center. His donations to SU also include speeches, some with personalized inscriptions, signed by notables like John F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

There are also items with ties to literary figures such as Ray Bradbury and Arthur Miller, and an original copy of H.G. Wells’ ‘First Men on the Moon’ with an inscription from Neil Armstrong, Quimby said. While the Library of Congress also has some of Safire’s papers, SU’s collection boasts 27 linear feet of his papers, including novel manuscripts and drafts and a document Nixon presented him upon his appointment as special assistant to the president, Quimby said. Safire was a frequent SU visitor, serving on various panels and witnessing the dedication of the Newhouse III building in 2007. ‘It was really a payback situation for him,’ O’Brien said of his visits and donations. ‘We were his alma mater.’

bmdavies@syr.edu

Published on September 28, 2009 at 12:00 pm