To author Karen Rothmeyer, he confided near the end of his life: I decided that I would become an architect because it sounded so prestigious and so easy.
He got a part-time job as a night copy boy at the Herald Tribune, then dropped out of school to work full-time at the newspaper.
[2] He had a stutter[6] and a painfully slow typing speed which did not stop him from being promoted to general assignment reporter after four years.
On one such mission to Wilhelmshaven in March 1943, the B-17 bomber formation in which he and fellow reporters Walter Cronkite and Gladwin Hill were flying suffered heavy losses to enemy fighters.
[4] Once again, he was in the thick of things; a July 10, 1950, dispatch described being caught between North Korean tanks and an American artillery barrage.
He soon realized that the war was a mistake, stating "I never thought we'd be stupid enough to send ground troops over there in the first place, after the experience in Korea".
[6] The New York Times dispatched Bigart to cover some of the most significant events of the struggle of Southern blacks for civil rights.
He followed the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, in response to Governor Orval Faubus's refusal to comply with federal court orders to desegregate the city's public schools.
[9] He covered the demonstrations in St. Augustine, Florida, that led directly to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.