alumni profiles

John Dillin retires after 38-year tenure with ‘Christian Science Monitor’

	John Dillin makes the cover as a staff tribute

by William McKeen

It’s a lot of work to do nothing. Just ask John Dillin.

Dillin, JM 1958, retired in July after 38 years with The Christian Science Monitor and he thinks it’s been hard to slow down and relax. “Weekends still feel like weekends,” he said. “I still feel that I have to go to work on Mondays. It’s hard to get the engine to slow down.”

He was associate editor and Washington bureau chief when he retired, although he served in many positions and in a number of locations over the years, including Vietnam during the war.

Retirement for Dillin will be more of a break, as he plans to begin work on special projects for the Monitor in February, six months after his “retirement.”

The first project will be a series of interviews with other former Monitor correspondents. He will be traveling extensively, finding the newspaper’s far-flung writers and producing 15,000-20,000 word interviews. In 2008, on the Monitor’s 100th anniversary, Dillin’s interviews will be used as the basis for a book on the publication’s history.

Dillin planned to spend the six-month break methodically working on his house—taking care of projects his schedule had not allowed him to do – but the terrorist attacks in September jolted his journalist’s soul and he wanted to contribute to the Monitor’s coverage. Unfortunately, the Monitor had not sent him his new press badge designating him as a special correspondent and he was unable to pitch in on the reporting of the attack on the Pentagon without the proper credentials. “And they [the Monitor] needed all the help they could get,” he said.

Dillin said “the guidance of such outstanding teachers as Rae Weimer, “Buddy” Davis, Hugh Cunningham and John Paul Jones was invaluable. The ideals and dedication they instilled served me well during my entire career, which included early stints with The St. Augustine Record and the The Tampa Tribune. I will always be in their debt.”

Until he begins his globe-trotting for the interview project, Dillin hopes to travel a bit for pleasure and to study the art of doing nothing.

“I have a good friend who retired ahead of me,” Dillin said. “He told me, `John, what you have to realize is that doing nothing is not evil.’”