William Evered Sloan III

Bill Sloan, award-winning Texas journalist, author, and military historian, died peacefully on Sunday afternoon, November 10, at his Dallas home at age 84. Bill had been in hospice care for less than a week.

Born William Evered Sloan III on September 8, 1935, at the old St. Paul Hospital in Dallas, Bill’s writing career spanned more than six decades, including three stints at the Dallas Times Herald when only two were officially allowed. Over his long and distinguished career, Bill received a string of awards, including a 1971 Sweepstakes Winner Award from the Associated Press (AP) Managing Editors Association and a Pulitzer Prize nomination for a series of stories, Five Dark Days in Dallas, on the murder of three Dallas County sheriff’s deputies in the Trinity River Bottoms, written with fellow staffer Ron Calhoun, and the 2012 Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award for his military history, Undefeated: America’s Heroic Fight for Bataan and Corregidor. He was the author of 16 books on a range of topics, including World War II and the Korean War, the Kennedy Assassination, and the tabloid industry. His book, I Watched a Wild Hog Eat My Baby, was based on his colorful experiences in the tabloid industry during which time he served as the editor of the National Enquirer, the National Tattler, and the Star.

Most recently, and for more than a decade, Bill’s passion lay in capturing the stories of veterans whose battlefield sacrifices had gone unforgotten in the annals of American history. His book, The Ultimate Battle Okinawa 1945 –The Last Epic Struggle of World War II, was described in this way: “With the same “grunt's-eye-view” narrative style that distinguished his Brotherhood of Heroes (on the Battle of Peleliu), Bill Sloan presents a gripping and uniquely personal saga of heroism and sacrifice…”

His last book, Their Backs Against the Sea: The Battle of Saipan and the Largest Banzai Attack of World War II, was published in 2017. Bill dedicated this book to his friend and fellow author, the late Floyd Wood, who suggested the idea for his first military history, Given Up for Dead: America's Heroic Stand at Wake Island published in 2008.

Bill was a graduate of North Texas State College, now the University of North Texas, where he studied journalism under the legendary C. E. “Pop” Shuford, served as the editor of The Campus Chat newspaper and the Avesta literary magazine, and earned recognition as the Outstanding Journalism Graduate in 1957. Among the contributors to campus publications during Bill’s tenure as editor was the legendary Texas writer and his friend, Larry McMurtry.

After graduation from North Texas, Bill began his journalism career as a reporter/editor at The Texas Mesquiter, which later became the Mesquite News, now the oldest operating newspaper in Texas. He went on to work at newspapers in Colorado City, Lubbock, Kerrville, and Marshall prior to landing a job as a copy editor at the Dallas Times Herald. In that position, he played a major role in the historic coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. His first book, Tear Gas and Hungry Dogs, a novel about racial issues in a small Texas town, also was published during that time.

After leaving the Times Herald in 1975, Bill became editor of Country Rambler, a national magazine focused on country music, and began a successful independent journalism career. The upstairs of his 1926 bungalow became his office as he focused first on corporate histories and later military histories and contributed to publications produced by the national offices of the Boy Scouts of America and the American Heart Association. The idea of working from home was so novel he and his wife, Lana, also a journalist, were featured in an article in the Dallas Morning News, “The Alternative: Work at Home” in 1980.

Known by his sharp wit and wry sense of humor, Bill had an amazing ability to weave words like no other – the consummate storyteller. He was a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and a long-time member of Urban Park United Methodist Church. He also taught journalism at Southern Methodist University (SMU).

Bill is survived by his wife of 43 years, Lana Henderson Sloan; daughters and sons-in-law, Sheri Sloan-Lewis and husband, Stacy, and Sue Moisan and husband, Bob; grandchildren Erin Lewis and wife, Rachel; Caitlin Hallstrom and husband, Forrest; Ashley Oswald and husband, Sam, and Brad Moisan; great-grandchildren Carson, Janie, Evelyn, and Luke; nieces, Sheila and Kristi, grandnieces and nephews, Melody, Michael, Jason, Kaity, and Paityn; first cousins, Jane Brown and Catherine Kneeland; his first love and the mother of his children, Jane Kennedy, and his many in-laws, nieces, and nephews in his Arkansas family. He was preceded in death by his parents, Bill and Linnie Sloan, and his sister, Esther Sloan-Kavanaugh.

Visitation will be held at Grove Hill Funeral Home Friday, November 15, 2019 6-8pm, Funeral Service November 16, 2019 at 11am in the Grove Hill Chapel. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made in Bill’s honor to the Wounded Warriors Project at https://support.woundedwarriorproject.org/default.aspx?tsid=11585&ovr_acv_id=8770&campaignSource=ONLINE&source=BS19056&gclsrc=aw.ds&ds_rl=1264110&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIoozAvZTi5QIVnf_jBx0yAQE3EAAYASAAEgLLifD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds