 |
Another nationally known late 20th
century family member is Donald Christian Kirkman, son of Christian William
"Christy" Kirkman IV and Hazel Clark Kirkman.
Born in Flushing, NY on April 23, 1929, Don graduated from Bayside (NY) High School in
1947 and Kent State University (OH) School of Journalism in 1958. After three years in the Navy as an aerographer’s mate (weatherman), including duty on a troop transport which visited Pearl Harbor, Guam, the Philippines, Japan, Panama, and the Caribbean, he became a civilian weather observer for the U.S. Weather Bureau’s Atlantic Weather Patrol based in Boston, MA, and New York. He made 30 month-long voyages on 22 Coast Guard cutters to North Atlantic |
| weather stations and
port calls in Newfoundland, Iceland and Bermuda. In all, he spent five years at sea with
the Navy and Atlantic Weather Patrol. While studying journalism at Kent State, Don met and married Natalie Ann DeBlasio, daughter of Alex and Emilda "Millie" DeBlasio of Youngstown, OH. He spent six years as a reporter, copy editor and night city editor on the Akron, (OH) Beacon Journal, edited a company newspaper for Aerojet-General Corp. in Azusa, CA, and in June 1966 became science editor for Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, DC. Don spent 36 years as a journalist, 29 as a member of the Washington press corps. He covered seven of the 20th century’s most important stories, including Apollo 11's historic first landing on the moon; all the Apollo moon landings, some Gemini missions, planetary explorations, and Space Shuttle flights.
Don also visited the South Pole, covered the attempted assassinations of President Ronald Reagan and Alabama Gov. George Wallace, and attended press conferences of seven presidents (LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton). Don also covered medical, meteorology, chemistry and nuclear meetings, wrote weekly weather and medical columns and a day-by-day account of World War II. His writings appeared in nearly 400 newspapers, anthologies, textbooks and the Congressional Record. He also was president of the National Association of Science Writers, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Kent State’s Distinguished Alumnus of 1971, a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve, and listed in Who’s Who in America for several years. Don and Natalie have four children: Christian William Kirkman V, Kathryn Ann, Kenneth Donald and Karen Dina.
After a year long battle with heart and kidney disease, Don died of heart failure on October 28th 2001. Natalie died of lung cancer on January 27th 2008. |
|
