Pulitzer Prize-winning economics editor to speak at
Eureka College commencement

David Wessel’s family has unique connection to EC

David Wessel, the economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, will give the commencement address at Eureka College May 9. The ceremony will take place at 10:30 a.m. in Rinker Outdoor Amphitheatre.

Wessel is deputy bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal's Washington bureau and writes the “Capital” column, a weekly look at the economy and the forces shaping living standards around the world. He appears frequently on National Public Radio, CNBC and “Washington Week” carried by Public Broadcasting Service stations.

Wessel joined The Wall Street Journal in 1984 in the Boston bureau and moved to the Washington bureau in 1987. In 1999 and 2000 he was the newspaper’s Berlin bureau chief. He previously worked for the Boston Globe, the Hartford (Conn.) Courant and the Middletown (Conn.) Press. He is a graduate of Haverford College and was a Knight Bagehot Fellow in Business & Economics Journalism at Columbia University.

Wessel has shared two Pulitzer Prizes, one for a Boston Globe series in 1983 on race in the workplace in Boston and the other for Wall Street Journal stories on the corporate scandals of 2002.

Wessel’s book on the Federal Reserve's response to the current financial crisis, “In Fed We Trust,” is scheduled for publication by Crown this fall.

Wessel’s family has a poignant connection to Eureka College. His mother, Irmgard Rosenzweig Wessel, and his maternal grandparents, Louis and Grete Rosenzweig, escaped from Nazi Germany and settled in Eureka through the sponsorship of the Eureka Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Grete worked in the Eureka College kitchen and Irmgard earned a degree in sociology from the college in 1947.  Irmgard went on to earn a master’s degree in social work and married pediatrician Morris Wessel. David Wessel is among the couple’s four children.

"I grew up hearing stories from my grandmother and mother about the goodness of the people of Eureka Christian Church and Eureka College, who took a family of German Jewish refugees and nurtured them in the darkest days of the 20th century,” Wessel said. “Just as we should never forget the Holocaust, we should never forget the generosity of spirit of the people of Eureka and the college and all those others who sheltered and protected the vulnerable. If my visit to the college and my mother's story inspires just one member of the Class of 2009 to walk the path that earlier generation did, I will consider it an enormous success. I come to Eureka full of gratitude, inspired by what was done for my mother's family 60 years ago."

Eureka College will award David Wessel an honorary doctor of humane letters degree during the commencement ceremony.

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Contact:

Michele Lehman

Media Relations Coordinator

mlehman@eureka.edu

(309) 467-6318