One way to spot a veteran TIME writer is to ask him how many cover stories he has written. When he says, "I can't remember." you can be sure that he is a real veteran. One such man is Walter ("Sandy") Stockly recently the guest of honor at an office party celebrating his 20th anniversary as a TIME writer.

Stockly's first story for TIME, written for the issue of June 26. 1933, was titled "Bellower." It was the account of a slight stroke suffered by 63-year-old Joe Humphries, in those days the stentorian dean of sports announcers. Less than a year later. Stockly wrote his first cover story--on Astronomer Sir Arthur S. Eddington. For the past three years he has been TIME'S expert on the Korean war, writing most of the battlefront stories about that area.

Stockly came to TIME with the background of a pilot, a cab driver and a steel -mill -worker -turned -reporter who was fired by a newspaper editor with the warning: "You're a fine legman, but you'll never be a good writer as long as you live."

Born 48 years ago in Charleston, W. Va., where his father was a coal-mining engineer. Stockly's first bid for fame was on the baseball diamond. Because he was so small, he was a pitcher's despair. A local sportswriter dubbed him "Fly's Eyelash Stockly." However, in time he grew and now stands (unslouched) a respectable 6 ft. 1 in.

After graduating from Mercersburg Academy, Stockly entered Princeton where he majored in French. "At that time." he says, "there were three things I wanted to do: drive a taxi, fly a plane and work on a newspaper." In due course he accomplished all three. Between his junior and senior years at Princeton, he drove a cab around Pittsburgh for six months. "The third day I had the cab job, a man asked me to drive him and his son (the patient) to an insane asylum about 15 miles away. I was so new I didn't know the way. I took him such a roundabout route that I was conscience-stricken at the end of the ride and deducted 60-c- from the $14.60 fare."

After Princeton, Stockly took on odd jobs, including a stint in a steel-mill, while pestering Pittsburgh newspapers to hire him. Finally, the Sun-Telegraph agreed to give him a job if he would work a trial month without salary. Stockly agreed, and after a month he was on the payroll at $30 a week. Eleven months later, he was off the payroll with the editor's prediction that he would never become a writer.

So Stockly took to the air. He was accepted as a flying cadet in 1929, went to Brooks Field, Texas, where he managed to get through primary, cross-country, formation and night-flight training before he was washed out as being "unmilitary in character, too individualistic to fit into the Army." Shortly thereafter, Stockly's father, who was ill, took the family to Tucson. With no depression jobs available, Stockly entered the University of Arizona for postgraduate work in French and other romance languages, learned to read French almost as fluently as English.

In 1933 (having driven the cab, flown the plane, worked for a paper) Stockly headed for New York determined to work either for The New Yorker magazine or TIME. He came to TIME first, was given a writing trial and hired. For the next seven years he wrote TIME'S Science section.

With the beginning of World War II, Stockly shifted to writing Foreign News, to which he returned after a military leave of absence in Air Force intelligence. His wartime cover stories include Alexander Novikov, Russia's air force chief, and a Nazi trinity: Heidrich, Rommel and Himmler. Of all his cover stories, says Stockly, the one he enjoyed doing most was Heinrich Himmler: "It was a real witches' brew."

Four years ago Writer Stockly read another man's story which changed his life considerably. The story was Tom Lea's The Brave Bulls. "I thought there must be something to this bull fighting," he said, and began to read more on the subject. "I became an aficionado by literary means." Then he did it the real way, took six months' leave of absence to tour the bull rings of Spain. He now takes his summer vacations in the winter to see the fights in Mexico.

Stockly lives in a 2 1/2-acre country place in Wilton, Conn, with his wife and seven-year-old daughter, who wants to be a ballet dancer when she grows up. By the time that happens, says Stockly, he plans to be resting in the countryside, translating some good French novels.

Cordially yours,

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