Memorial bench engraved with Lord's book titles Lord wrote, or edited and annotated 11 bestselling books on such diverse subjects as the Attack on Pearl Harbor ( Day of Infamy, 1957), the Battle of Midway ( Incredible Victory, 1967), the Battle of the Alamo ( A Time to Stand, 1961), the Battle of Baltimore ( The Dawn's Early Light, 1972), Arctic exploration ( Peary to the Pole, 1963), pre- World War I America ( The Good Years: From 1900 to the First World War, 1960), Coastwatchers ( Lonely Vigil, 1977), the Dunkirk evacuation ( The Miracle of Dunkirk, 1982), and the civil rights struggle ( The Past That Would Not Die, 1965 ). Afterwards, Lord returned to Yale, where he earned a degree in law. He was the agency's secretariat when the war ended in 1945.

During World War II, he was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services as a code clerk in London, in 1942. Lord then enrolled at Yale Law School, interrupting his studies to join the United States Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He then studied history at Princeton University and graduated in 1939. Like many other boys who attended high school at Baltimore's Gilman School, he spent his summers at Hyde Bay Camp for Boys at Hyde Bay in Cooperstown, New York, where he was awarded the honorary title of 'The Commodore' and later returned to reign over many annual camp events, like the eight inch regatta and closing barbecue and bonfire. In July 1925, at the age of 7, Lord traveled across the Atlantic Ocean with his mother and sister, from New York to Cherbourg and Southampton, on the RMS Olympic, the Titanic 's sister ship. Lord's grandfather, Richard Curzon Hoffman, was president of the Baltimore Steam Packet Company ('Old Bay Line') steamship firm in the 1890s. His father, who was a lawyer, died when Lord was just three years old. and Henrietta MacTier (Hoffman) Lord on October 8, 1917. Lord was born in Baltimore, Maryland to John Walter Lord Sr.

(Octo– May 19, 2002) was an American author, lawyer, copywriter and popular historian best known for his 1955 account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, A Night to Remember. Francis Parkman Prize for Special Achievement (1994)

The Night Lives On by Walter Lord