Obituary: Carl Theodore Solberg

Carl Theodore Solberg

1915 -2003

Carl Solberg, who served as air intelligence officer on the staff of Admiral William F. (“Bull”) Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet during World War II, and served with him on his flagships during such engagements as the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and was later present with him at the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, died at his home in Mount Vernon, NY on August 9, 2003. He was 88 years old.

Death was caused by complications following surgery to repair a hip fracture suffered in his home at The Wartburg Community in Mount Vernon in late July.

Carl Theodore Solberg was a Rhodes Scholar and a reporter for the fledgling Time magazine, along with John Hersey, James Agee and Theodore White, from 1939 until 1967. He was the author of the leading biography of Hubert H. Humphrey (which is scheduled for re-publication later this year), a book describing his experiences with Admiral Halsey, and other books on subjects as diverse as the Cold War, the politics of oil and the history of commercial aviation. He was also the long time president of The Roothbert Fund, Inc. in New York City, a private foundation established in 1958 and run by volunteers which has provided scholarship aid to students, especially those interested in teaching.

Mr. Solberg was born on March 20, 1915, in Minneapolis, the son of the Rev. Carl K. Solberg, a Lutheran minister, and his wife, Sina Varland Solberg. He was married to the late Barbara Selmer Solberg for 57 years. Mr. Solberg graduated from St Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota in 1935 and immediately went to work editing The Pierce County Press, then a weekly newspaper in Rugby, ND.

A year later, he won a Rhodes Scholarship which he used to earn three graduate degrees at Oxford University over the course of three years. Upon returning to the United States in 1939, Mr. Solberg moved to New York City and joined Time, first as a book reviewer and later as a reporter.

With the outbreak of World War II, he enlisted in the US Navy, was commissioned an Ensign and assigned to serve on Adm. Halsey’s staff where he remained for virtually the whole of the War. During this period Mr. Solberg sailed with Adm. Halsey on both the USS New Jersey and later on the USS Missouri in such engagements as the Battle of Leyte Gulf (the largest naval battle in US history) and was present on the Missouri in Tokyo Bay for the surrender of the Japanese on V-J Day, August 15, 1945.

Carl Solberg met Barbara Selmer, a pianist studying at the Manhattan School of Music while he lived in New York City before the War. Later, during the War, Barbara Selmer served as a Red Cross volunteer at Noumea, New Caledonia where Mr. Solberg’s ship periodically anchored and Adm. Halsey frequently invited the young pianist to dinner aboard the Missouri to play for his staff. In 1945, the Admiral granted his intelligence officer leave to return to the United States in order to marry Ms. Selmer. He then resumed his position on the Halsey staff for the remainder of the war. Mrs. Solberg died in 2002.

Returning to Time after the War, Mr. Solberg was assigned first to its Latin American Desk where he covered the revolutions that wracked that part of the world in the 1940s and 50s and then to the Middle East Desk where he followed the growth of Israel and the United Arab Republic and the chess game played out by the political factions of that region during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Before leaving the magazine to work for Time’s book division, he had contributed cover stories to Time on numerous political leaders including David Ben-Gurion, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Harold MacMillan, Ludwig Erhard and Nikita Khruschev.

After service with Time-Life Books, he retired in 1970 to become a free lance writer. His books include Riding High: America in the Cold War (Mason Lipscomb,1973), Oil Power: The Rise and Imminent Fall of an American Company (Mason/Charter, 1976), Conquest of the Skies: A History of Commercial Aviation in America (Little Brown,1979), Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (WW Norton,1984) and Decision and Dissent: With Halsey at Leyte Gulf (US Naval Institute Press, 1995).

Beginning in the late 1950’s, Mr. Solberg worked with his friends Albert and Toni Roothbert as they founded and contributed the bulk of their estates to The Roothbert Fund, Inc. Mr. Roothbert, a retired banker in New York, and his wife, a retired photographer for such publications as Vogue magazine, had determined to donate their accumulated assets to support “creatively dedicated scholars whose daily acts are prompted by spiritual rather than secular motives” with an emphasis on those interested in teaching. Typical of the grants made by the Fund were those conferred during its early years on a group of former students at Southern University in Louisiana. The students had been jailed and expelled late during their senior year after participating in a sit-in to desegregate a Baton Rouge lunch counter. After reading an article in The New York Times about the incident in 1960, Mr. Roothbert immediately dispatched Mr. Solberg to Baton Rouge to make grants to help the students finish their education and get their degrees elsewhere. In subsequent years, three of those grantees served on The Roothbert Fund Board of Directors.

Mr. Solberg became President of the Fund upon Mr. Roothbert’s death in 1965 and acted in that capacity until 1995 after which he continued to serve on the board of, and to volunteer his services to, the organization. Since its founding in 1958, The Roothbert Fund, which does not engage in fund-raising and is operated solely by volunteers, has made grants to more than 1,000 students, many of whom now participate in its ongoing operation.

Mr. Solberg continued offering his services and writing on various topics until a month before his death. This work included researching and writing his own family’s histories community in Mount Vernon where he and his wife spent their last years.

Mr. Solberg is survived by his children: Carl Tobias of Pound Ridge, NY, Richard S. of Ft. Plain, NY, Sara M. of Jersey City and Andrew V. of Attleboro, MA; his brother, the Rev. Richard W. Solberg of Thousand Oaks, CA; and seven grandchildren.