Humorist, Journalist and Author. Art Buchwald is best remembered for his long running political satire and commentary column that he wrote for the Washington Post newspaper.  He won a Pulitzer Prize for outstanding commentary in 1982.  Born Arthur Buchwald in Mount Vernon, New York, he was the son of a drapery salesman.  Soon after he was born, his mother was committed to an insane asylum.  Unable to care for the Art and his three sisters alone, his father abandoned the four children during the early Great Depression, leaving Art and his sisters to grow up in foster homes.  When he turned 17, Buchwald joined the US Marine Corps, serving in the Pacific during World War II.  He attained the rank of Sergeant, and worked as an editor on a Marine newspaper. At the end of the war, Buchwald enrolled at the University of Southern California, where he used his GI Bill education benefits to study journalism.  Buchwald began his career as a journalist in 1949 in Paris, where he wrote about the Paris nightlife for the New York Herald Tribune.  On October 12, 1952, he married Ann McGarry in London; they would adopt three children:  Joel, Jennifer and Connie.  Returning to the US in 1962, he obtained work with the Washington Post newspaper, writing humorous columns filled with political satire.  He would often joke to his colleagues and friends that just when you think there is nothing more to write about, [President] Nixon says, ‘I am not a crook’, and [President] Jimmy Carter says ‘I have lusted after women in my heart.’  In 1982, Buchwald was selected for a Pulitzer Prize for outstanding commentary, and four years later, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  Buchwald wrote more than thirty books, including two autobiographies, “Leaving Home” (1993) and “I’ll Always have Paris” (1996).  In 1988 he successfully sued Paramount Pictures for $900,000, contending that the company used his 1983 script “King for a Day” for the Eddie Murphy movie “Coming to America” (1988) without giving him credit or payment.  He would write columns for the Washington Post two to three times a week, starting in 1962 until his death, and was considered by many of his colleagues as the dean of political satire.  Shortly before his death, he was awarded the 2006 Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.  Suffering from diabetes, in February 2006, he checked into a Washington DC hospice with failing kidneys, and due to complications from poor circulation, doctors amputated his right leg below the knee. Electing to forego kidney dialysis, Buchwald lived longer than the doctors gave him.  When his kidneys started working again in July 2006, he returned to his summer home on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where he wrote his last book, “Too Soon to Say Goodbye” (2006) about the time he spent in the hospice.  He died of kidney failure at the age of 81 at his son Joel’s home in Washington DC. (bio by: Kit and Morgan Benson)  Family links:  Spouse:  Ann McGarry Buchwald (1920 – 1994)Cause of death: Kidney failure