Roy A. Herbert, 66, Magazine Editor
Published: March 11, 1996
Roy A. Herbert, a former managing editor of Reader's Digest who was credited with ending the magazine's support of the Vietnam War, died on Friday at his home in Pound Ridge, N.Y. He was 66.
The cause was a heart attack, his wife, April Hodges Herbert, said.
Mr. Herbert, who went to work for the magazine after his graduation from Princeton University in 1951, was an assistant managing editor in the late 1960's when his own growing doubts about American involvement in Vietnam led him to influence the magazine to abandon its longstanding support of the war and of the Nixon administration.
As a result, the magazine made an abrupt shift, among other things commissioning Theodore H. White to write a book, which later came to be known as "Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon."
Mr. Herbert became managing editor in 1974 and retired in 1983.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Herbert is survived by two daughters, Dr. Robin Herbert of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., and Lauren of Lincoln, Mass.; a son, Michael, of Ossining, N.Y.; three brothers, Jack, of Lakewood, N.J., Everett, of Fairfield, Conn., and Kenneth, of Boothbay, Me.; a sister, Marian, of Blowing Rock, N.C.; and two grandchildren.