Joe Kelly - Looking Down From A Better Place

For more than half a century it was a spot where he looked down from onto some of the biggest moments in Maryland racing history.

And now the press box high atop the grandstand at Pimlico bears his name.

Recently the press box at Old Hilltop was renamed to include Joe Kelly, who passed away in November at the age of 94.

The Red Smith-Joe Kelly Press Box.

Two of the most respected men to have ever covered Thoroughbred racing in the United States with their names side-by-side in the facility where they both chronicled so many memorable moments.

This blogger is hard pressed to remember a time before Mr. Kelly’s passing this past year when I was in the fabled press box and the man who covered horse racing for nearly 70 years wasn’t there.

“Nobody spent more time in the Pimlico press box,” said Mike Gathagan, Pimlico’s vice president of communications. “We felt it was important to honor Mr. Kelly, so the next generations of turf writers know what he meant to this place. He was a tremendous resource and positive influence. We just finished our third week of the spring meet and it is weird not to see him in his office or in the chair where he sat while wagering each afternoon.”

Well said Mike!

Former Star National Security and Foreign Affaris, David Wood Awarded Pulitzer Prize

David Wood, 66, began his journalism career in 1970 as an editor for the Pioneer Press chain in Illinois. In 1977, he started covering guerrilla wars in Africa as Time magazine's Nairobi bureau chief, later reporting on the military, national security and foreign affairs for the now-shuttered Washington Star, Los Angeles Times, Newhouse News Service, Baltimore Sun and AOL's PoliticsDaily site. Wood, who was previously a Pulitzer finalist, has covered conflicts in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Central America. Most recently, he has made several trips to the front in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Full story: Huffington Post Awarded Pulitzer Prize

Henry Bradsher Book - "The Dalai Lama's Secret and Other Reporting Adventures"

Bradsher in the Himalayas in 1961
finding a covert CIA-sponsored
Tibetan guerrilla army

The Louisiana State University Press has published (April 8) in its media series a book by Henry S. Bradsher on various episodes in his journalism career, from reporting Martin Luther King Jr.'s bus boycott to various adventures in India (reporting the India-China border war, tiger hunting with Queen Elizabeth, etc.), and in Moscow (forcing a Khrushchev retraction, blocking blackmail, getting his car bombed by an angry KGB, etc.) -- all for The AP -- and later for the Star in China (being labeled by Beijing the "most despicable" writer on Chinese affairs before being honored for having been right, etc.), in Vietnam (with Kissinger attempting to keep the Star from publishing some inconvenient reports) and Cambodia and the Bangladesh war, in the Middle East, and elsewhere. The book is titled The Dalai Lama's Secret and Other Reporting Adventures, a title derived from coverage of the Dalai Lama when he fled into India in 1959.

Note: Henry occasionally tours with Silversea Cruise Line as a guest lecturer.