Hensley, Stewart, 1913-1976

Newspaper correspondent.

Biographical Note

Stewart Hensley was born in Saguache, Colorado, in 1913. Following his graduation from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1934, he worked on several newspapers in New Mexico and Texas and served as news chief of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service before beginning his career with United Press Associations, later United Press International, in 1944. After a brief period on the foreign news desk in New York, he was assigned to the China-Burma-India theater as a war correspondent in 1945 and subsequently became United Press Associations manager for India. Hensley was transferred to the Washington bureau in 1947 and became chief diplomatic and State Department correspondent for United Press International in 1958, a position in which he served until his death. He reported for the United Press International from nearly fifty countries and was a familiar figure at major international conferences and on the overseas trips of American presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower through Richard M. Nixon. Hensley received the Distinguished Service in Journalism award by the University of Missouri in 1965. He died on February 15, 1976 in Washington, D.C.