Laurence Jolidon's journalism career yielded work as a veteran journalist, author, war correspondent, independent writer, and producer. Jolidon held senior reporting and editing positions at a number of major daily newspapers, including USA Today, Detroit Free Press, Dallas Times Herald, Newsday, Austin American-Statesman and the St Petersburg Times. He was a media advisor, publisher of an Internet news service, and university lecturer. He founded his own publishing company, Ink Slinger Press, which produced his book, Last Seen Alive, about Americans missing in the Korean War, and Turn Back Before Baghdad, a compilation of journalists' dispatches from the Gulf War. Jolidon was a Gannett professional in residence from 1981-82. He served a year as press adviser to the NATO Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia-Herzegovnia in 1996. Jolidon also trained journalists in Indonesia, the Russian Federation and the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. He served as spokesman for the NATO Peace Stabilization Force, known as SFOR, for most of 2001-2002. A native of Oklahoma, Laurence Jolidon was a graduate of Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. Colleagues knew Jolidon as a competitive reporter who was passionate about the news business and loved to argue about almost anything, especially military topics. His military background came from his service in Vietnam and working as a war correspondent for USA Today.
Collection consists of correspondence, research notes, notebooks, copies of military and government documents, media pool reports, news clippings, printed material, maps, articles written by Jolidon, photographs, audio and video cassettes, and files for book Last Seen Alive. The bulk of Jolidon's research relates to prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action during the Korean War. There is also a significant amount of material concerning the Gulf War of 1991 and military actions in Bosnia during 1996. The research for his book, Last Seen Alive, came from not only the National Archives and the families of MIAs and returned POWs, but also from declassified Russian documents and Russians and Chinese who were participating in the war and interrogation of American POWs. Jolidon's research also describes new details about the transfer of American POWs to Manchuria and the Soviet Union, and makes definite parallel's between the fate of UN prisoners from Korea and Cold War airmen who were also subjected to Soviet captivity. In Turn Back Before Baghdad, published in 2001, Jolidon tells of finding an archive of 1,500 "media pool" reports by American and British reporters that had been filed away in a U.S. military public affairs office at the Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, hotel that served as media headquarters during the war. These media pool reports are also part of the collection.
Unrestricted access.
Some audio/video materials are restricted. Please contact Center for advance retrieval.
Laurence Jolidon Collection, 1987-2002, Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin