Barnet Nover

Barnet Novogrudsky was born in New York City and attended DeWitt Clinton High School.[1][2] At Cornell University, from which he graduated in 1919, he began using the last name Nover and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.[2][3] The following year, he received a Master of Arts degree from the same university.[2]

Nover began his career as a reporter for the Buffalo Evening News in 1920, a position he would hold for the next 16 years while simultaneously lecturing on international relations at the University of Buffalo.[2] As a reporter for the Buffalo Evening News, Nover traveled extensively in Europe and Asia and received honorable mention for the 1930 Pulitzer Prize.[2]

In 1936 Nover was hired as a reporter for The Washington Post, where he covered foreign policy.[4] His 1939 article "British Surrender – a Munich for the Holy Land", which compared the White Paper of 1939 to the Munich Agreement, was inserted into the Congressional Record by then United States Senator Harry Truman.[5] For a three-year period, beginning in 1944, he hosted the nationally syndicated radio program Washington Views and Interviews simultaneous to his work with The Washington Post.[2] In 1947, Nover left The Washington Post to accept an assignment as Washington bureau chief of The Denver Post, a position he held until his 1971 retirement.[4] Following retirement, Barnet Nover kept his foreign policy column going through syndication.[4]

During the 89th Congress, Nover served as acting chair of the Standing Committee of Correspondents of the Capitol Press Gallery.[6]

Nover was married to Naomi Goll in 1934.[4] He had at least one sister, Mary, who married Isaac Edward Kiev and worked as a librarian at Congregation Emanu-El of New York from 1949 to 1964.[7]

Nover was a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, the White House Correspondents Association, and the National Press Club.[2] He died at Massachusetts General Hospital April 15, 1973, aged 74.[2]

In 1976, Naomi Nover financially endowed the Washington Press Club's Barnet Nover Memorial Award, named after her late husband.[8]

According to Marlin Fitzwater, in 1988 Naomi Nover also donated a refrigerator in Barnet Nover's memory to the White House Briefing Room, which was subsequently used to store turkey sandwiches and soft drinks.[9] Over a period of years the door of the Nover memorial refrigerator stopped functioning and rust developed on it, until it was finally removed sometime prior to 1995.[9]