In Memoriam: Les Whitten ’50 ’90H, Investigative Journalist

Les Whitten ’50 ’90H, an influential investigative journalist who often returned to Lehigh to share his expertise with students, passed away Dec. 2, 2017.

A novelist, poet, and teacher, Whitten was best known for his career as a muckraking journalist during the Watergate era.

Before he even began teaching at Lehigh, Jack Lule, chair of Lehigh’s Department of Journalism, knew of Whitten’s work. “He had an extraordinary career. Les was in the middle of Watergate,” he commented. “He was a really good reporter that would just get on a story and just keep reporting it and keep reporting it and keep reporting it.”

Whitten’s career in journalism began at Lehigh. At the urging of his father, Whitten initially studied civil engineering. He left the university for two years of Army service and then returned to pursue a degree in English and journalism. He served as editor-in-chief for The Brown and White and was an aspiring novelist.

For the Winter 2005 Alumni Bulletin, Whitten reflected on his Lehigh days, crediting the university with playing a key role in his success. “I was clay and made into a statue of sorts...crafted into a writer and a poet and a novelist,” he said. “Maybe it would have happened had I attended a different school, but I don’t know.”

He said, “I was a piece of work at Lehigh—here’s an engineering school with this guy who is in love with literature. I used to go up in the stacks at Linderman Library, and it was Carl Sandburg writing about the cool tombs. When I got up there in that library, I was in pig heaven. I could look at all the book covers. And I loved Lehigh because of its unconditional love. Lehigh let me be whoever I wanted to be as long as I produced.”

After graduation in 1950, Whitten worked for Radio Free Europe, The Washington Post, and the Hearst Corp. In 1969, he joined Jack Anderson’s “Washington Merry-Go-Round” as a syndicated columnist, uncovering corporate and political scandals. His aggressive and sometimes questionable style of journalism put him at odds with President Richard M. Nixon and at the center of numerous political scandals and controversies.

Whitten left full-time reporting in the late 1970s, going on to publish 17 books, including poetry, a biography, a children’s book and a murder mystery. He was especially influential as an author in the vampire and werewolf horror genre. One novel, Moon of the Wolf, was made into a 1970s ABC Movie of the Week.

Throughout the years, Whitten remained a regular follower of The Brown and White and stayed in tune with the life of the university, often chiming in with letters to the editors on campus issues.

He returned to Lehigh as a visiting professor for creative writing and to lecture on investigative reporting. In 1988, he donated his papers and memorabilia to the university’s Special Collections. The papers include political writings, manuscript drafts, letters he wrote to his family, and even a draft of his unfinished first novel, which was loosely based on his Lehigh days. He was awarded an honorary degree by Lehigh in 1990.

Whitten’s classmate, Herb Siegel ’50, created an endowed scholarship in his honor in 2001. The Leslie H. Whitten Jr. Scholarship Fund, awarded to journalism majors, has benefitted 19 students since its inception. Past recipients have gone on to become writers, reporters, producers, professors, and more.

Jack Lule remembers Whitten’s personal touch. “Not that long ago, I saw he had translated a book of poems, and I had written to him about it,” said Lule. “The next thing you know, we had a box of the poems, and he had autographed a copy of the book for every one of the Journalism majors. That’s the kind of guy he was. It just shows the kind of care he had for Lehigh.”

Story by Janet Norwood