THORNTON, WILLIS (10 March 1900-20 May 1965) experienced a varied career as a journalist, historian, and editor. A native Clevelander, he was raised in Akron, where his father, Willis, was business manager of the Akron Press, a Scripps-McRae newspaper (see EDWARD WILLIS SCRIPPS). After graduating from Adelbert College (see CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIV.) in 1921, the younger Thornton himself joined what had become Scripps-Howard, working for the CLEVELAND PRESS and then the Washington Daily News, where he became city editor. In 1930 he moved to the Scripps-Howard feature service, Newspaper Enterprise Assoc., working both in the New York office as bureau manager and in the Cleveland office as writer and editor. During WORLD WAR II he enlisted in the Army as a private, serving with a prisoner of war interrogation unit in Europe and returning as a captain. From 1945-58 he worked as an associate editor based in Cleveland for Greenburg: Publisher of New York. In the meantime he earned a master's in history from WRU and lectured there in journalism and American history. Among Thornton's books were The Third Term Issue (1939), Almanac for Americans (1941), Fable, Fact and History (1957), and The Liberation of Paris (1962). In 1959 he was appointed director of the newly-reorganized Press of Western Reserve University, a position he held until his death from a heart attack in his SHAKER HTS. home. He was survived by his wife (see EUGENIA THORNTON SILVER), a fellow book lover whom he had married in 1935.
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