Donald Aspinwall Allan
1923-Aug. 2, 2006
Woodside, California
Donald Aspinwall Allan, a journalist and information director of international organizations, died of cancer on August 2 at his home in Woodside. He was 83.
Mr. Allan was born in Washington, D.C. After graduation from Stanford University, he broke into journalism as a reporter for the Redwood City Tribune and San Francisco News. He served as a United Press correspondent in the Madrid and Paris news bureaus and was bureau chief in Brussels.
Later he was a city reporter for the New York Times, the Rome correspondent for Newsweek, and editor of the North American Newspaper Alliance. During these years, he published opinion pieces under his own name or for organization leaders in the International Herald Tribune.
An obituary in the Washington Post reported that while Mr. Allan worked at the New York Times, he was recruited by the CIA. Quitting his job at the Times, he moved to Rome and worked by day as a journalist and by night as a CIA agent. The Roman drama went beyond his double life, the Post reported. In 1956, Mr. Allan and a former wife attended a masked ball given by American Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce. They quarreled, and he went home. When his wife came home accompanied by an Italian journalist, Mr. Allan dashed out and stabbed the man repeatedly, according to the Post. He then spent 10 months in a Roman jail.
When he returned to the United States, he worked as managing editor of The Reporter Magazine, as foreign editor of the Saturday Evening Post and, as a sideline, a restaurant columnist for Gourmet Magazine. In 1971 he was appointed director of information for the Middle East Region of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) in Beirut, and served in Geneva and Nairobi.
In 1983 he was named director of information and education for the World Wide Fund for Nature International and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources based in Switzerland.
During World War II, Mr. Allan served as a 1st lieutenant in the 15th U.S. Air Force based in Italy. He was shot down over Budapest and spent 10 months as a prisoner of war in Germany. He escaped twice and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, two Purple Hearts, three Air Medals and the POW Medal.
Mr. Allan is survived by his widow, Dominika von Zahn Allan; six children, Eve Allan Baldwin of Half Moon Bay, Catherine Allan Grady of St. Paul, Minnesota, Scoville V. Allan of Bastrop, Texas, David M. Allan and Peter C. Allan of New York City, and Diana Allan Brown of Cambridge, Massachusetts; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
Tags: veteran, arts/media
