Henry Loomis

Henry Loomis, who extended the reach and defended the independence of the Voice of America as its director in the late 1950s and early 1960s before resigning in a clash with President Lyndon B. Johnson, died on Nov. 2 2008 in Jacksonville, Fla., where he lived. He was 89. Mr. Loomis was also president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the 1970s. A physicist by training, Mr. Loomis became director of the Voice of America in 1958, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Mr. Loomis resigned from the post in 1965 when the Voice of America came under increasing pressure from the White House not to report awkward foreign-policy news, notably the growing military involvement of the United States in Southeast Asia. Henry Loomis was born in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. His father, Alfred, amassed a vast fortune financing public utilities. Mr. Loomis left Harvard in his senior year to join the Navy, which assigned him to the staff of the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor. After leaving the Navy with the rank of lieutenant commander and a Bronze Star, Mr. Loomis did graduate work in physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and spent four years as assistant to the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology In 1972 President Richard M. Nixon appointed Mr. Loomis to be president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Mr. Loomis left the job in 1978. In 1946 he married Mary Paul MacLeod. The marriage ended in divorce, and in 1974 he married Jacqueline Chalmers. In addition to his wife, he is survived by the children from his first marriage, Henry S. Loomis of Denver; Mary P. Loomis of Hyde Park, Vt.; Lucy F. Loomis of Aiken, S.C.; and Gordon M. Loomis of Waxahachie, Tex., as well as four stepchildren, Charles J. Williams IV of Orlando, Fla.; John C. Williams and David F. Williams, both of Jacksonville; Robert W. Williams of Cary, N.C.; 17 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.