Alumni Excellence Award: David Lamb ’58

Lamb’s career as a journalist began modestly but auspiciously at The Rivers School. As a freshman in 1955, he received his first assignment from The Milwaukee Journal to produce a freelance article on baseball, his great love, covering the recently transplanted Braves baseball team. From this unexpected beginning, his career has taken him to the Okinawa Morning Star, the United Press International in San Francisco, and ultimately, The Los Angeles Times.

He has written extensively on twentieth century Africa in The Africans and on the complexities of Arab culture, religion and politics in The Arabs. During the course of his career he has earned Nieman, Alicia Patterson and Pew Fellowships. As a writer-in-residence at the University of Southern California School of Journalism, he shared his professional expertise with the next generation of reporters.

On a national level, Lamb has analyzed American society in his study of minor league baseball in Stolen Season: A Journey through America and Baseball’s Minor Leagues. The account of his solo bicycle journey across America chronicled physical challenges and personal discovery as it celebrated the country’s heartland. Over the Hills: A Mid-life Escape Across America by Bicycle is the story of a vanishing America as seen by Lamb as he pedaled from his home in Virginia to the end of the legendary Route 66 on the Santa Monica pier.

Lamb first went to Vietnam as a correspondent for UPI from 1968 to 1970. He returned in 1997 to establish a bureau for the Los Angeles Time in Hanoi. His book, Vietnam Now, A Reporter Returns is a study of the country that he rediscovered during his four years as bureau chief. In a one-hour PBS documentary, “Vietnam Passage: Journeys form War to Peace,” Lamb examines the postwar experiences of six Vietnamese with the help of filmmaker and wife, Sandy Northrop.