Haaker Family History & Genealogy

Edwin Loudon Haaker Franklin & Marshall Class of 1935

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By BILL BRUNS Managing Editor,
Palisadian-Post,
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272

Longtime Palisades (Calif.) resident Edwin Loudon Haaker '35, who covered D-Day, the Nuremberg war crimes trial and the Berlin Blockade during a distinguished career with NBC radio and television, died of pneumonia on April 1 at Santa Monica-UCLA Hospital. He was 92.

Haaker, who began his career at NBC as a page, was a London-based correspondent during much of World War II. He lived through the German bombings and blackouts with neighbor friends such as Edward R. Murrow, and along the way he met his future wife, Julia Knapp, who was a secretary for the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA.

As D-Day drew near, NBC informed Haaker that he would be covering the invasion from a B-26 - "which didn't promote much peace of mind," he told the Palisadian-Post in 1994. "They were known as Flying Coffins because they were relatively easy to shoot down, but if you're a war correspondent, you can't object to something like that."

On June 5, 1944, Haaker was working on a story at an air base south of London when he learned that he would have to stay overnight. "Nothing specific was said," he later recalled, "until they woke me about 4 a.m. and said, 'This is it' - the invasion was on."

Haaker's bomber had to work its way into formation with over 11,000 other planes that morning, circling above England for nearly an hour before heading across the Channel. "I was given a flak suit to wear and one to sit on, and a parachute.

They removed a panel from the plane so I could see out, but the weather was murky and we couldn't tell if we hit our target or not."

After delivering its load of bombs, Haaker's bomber returned to base. Years later he remembered the awe of "looking down and seeing all those ships, 4,000 or so ships, still out in the Channel," and wondering just what was happening along those beaches and bluffs. Soon he was in NBC's studio, deep below the British Ministry of Information, where he delivered his live, 30-minute radio broadcast back to the United States, ending with his signoff: "This is Ed Haaker, reporting from London."

Born in New York City in 1910, Haaker showed his independence at an early age. Every Thursday he would skip school in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., jump on the ferry to New York and spend the afternoon at a matinee. Much to his parents' dismay, when he was a teenager he decided that he wanted to go to California. Sneaking onto a ship headed for Los Angeles via Havana and the Panama Canal, he eventually showed up on the doorstep of his grandparents' home in Glendale. His parents ordered him home after a short visit.

After graduating from prep school at Franklin and Marshall Academy, Haaker enrolled at Franklin & Marshall College and later transferred to New York University. While working as a page at the NBC offices in New York, he realized he had a passion to work in the news business, and he talked his way into a job in the newsroom. Soon he was delivering an 8 a.m. news roundup and becoming a skilled reporter. By 1939 he was covering King George and Queen Elizabeth on a six-week tour of Canada.

About a year after Pearl Harbor, Haaker received his draft orders. Announcing to NBC he would be leaving, they told him if he could get on a ship within 48 hours they would transfer him to the London bureau as a war correspondent.

"Before I left New York," Haaker told the Post in 1994, "I went down to Abercrombie & Fitch and bought a MacArthur hat and the fanciest, most expensive trench coat I could find. Later, when I was covering the war and we saw a correspondent in a trench coat, we knew he had just arrived. Seasoned war correspondents never wore trench coats."

Haaker flew out of London on assignments to cover the war until August 1944, when he spent six weeks with the press that followed General Patton in the push towards Germany. He later reported on the liberations of the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps.

After the war, Haaker married Julia (whom he had met on a blind date) and became NBC's bureau chief in Berlin. He moved his growing family to Pacific Palisades in 1952 to work in NBC's Los Angeles office, where he spent the remainder of his career working as a news producer, director, editor and writer and finally once again as a reporter - this time for television. By the time he retired in 1975, he had received two Golden Mike awards.

In retirement, the tall and friendly Haaker enjoyed traveling, fishing, attending adult education classes, taking part in Greater L.A. Press Club activities, and spending time with his grandchildren. He is survived by his wife, Julia, a son, Peter of Westminster, CA, daughter Margaret Haaker of Pacific Palisades, CA, Marilyn Haaker of Pacific Palidades, Julie Haaker Teufel of Monticito, CA and 5 grandchildren.