Dynasty's End

To the New York Times, the word dynasty has a special meaning. Since Adolph Ochs took over the paper in 1896, it has stayed firmly in the family, handed down through three generations of descendants. And so last week, when Arnaldo Cortesi retired as the Times's Rome bureau chief, the paper could say goodbye with a special sadness. A member of the Cortesi family had represented the Times in Rome for 60 years.

The first was Arnaldo's mother, the former Isabelle Lauder Cochrane, who came to Rome from Boston, married Salvatore Cortesi, the Associated Press's man in Rome, and went to work for the Times. She was succeeded on her death in 1916 by a daughter, Elizabeth Arnaldo took over in 1921 and stayed 17 years--until Mussolini decreed that no Italian could work for the "foreign" press. The Times sent Cortesi to Geneva, Mexico City, and finally to Buenos Aires, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for his bold coverage of the repressive Peron regime. In 1946 he went back to Rome. Cortesi's successor: veteran Times Staffer Milton Bracker--who reopened the war-shuttered Rome bureau in 1944 and two years later handed it back to Arnaldo Cortesi.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.