Wilbur Cross (author)

Wilbur Lucius Cross III (August 17, 1918 – March 4, 2019) was an American author with over 50 books to his credit.^[1][2] He spent 10 years as an editor at Life. He was the grandson of Wilbur Lucius Cross.

Wilbur Cross
Born	Wilbur Lucius Cross III (1918-08-17)August 17, 1918 Scranton, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	March 4, 2019(2019-03-04) (aged 100)
Alma mater	Yale University
Occupation	Author
Spouse	Esther Wilkinson

Early life and education

Cross wrote mini books for his friends at an early age.^[3] He graduated from Kent School in 1937 and Yale University.^[4]

Upon graduation from Yale, he served in the United States Army and became a captain.^[4] He served in the Pacific theater during World War II for 39 months with communications, radar and photo units.^[4]

Career

After serving in the army, he worked for an ad agency where he was a copy writer.^[3] He became a senior editor for Continental Oil Company, where he wrote CONOCO, The First One Hundred Years.^[4]

As a free-lance writer in the 1950s and 1960s, he interviewed General Umberto Nobile and survivors of airship Italia, which crashed in the arctic in 1928, for an article in True magazine.^[5] This became the basis for the book, Disaster at the Pole.^[5]

He died in March 2019 at the age of 100.^[6]

Books

• Challengers of the Deep^[3]
• Disaster at the Pole^[5]
• Encyclopedia of American Submarines (2003)^[2]
• Gullah Culture in America (2012)^[3]
• Zeppelins of World War I (2003)^[2]