Joe B. Vogel

Joe B. Vogel died on Thursday, Feb. 22, 2007 at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. at the age of 88, of congestive heart failure. He was a resident at Ingleside, 3050 Military Road NW, Washington, D.C. He was born on July 15, 1918 in Lockhart, Texas to Joe and Jessie Vogel.
Joe graduated from Southwest Texas State Teachers College in 1940 and joined the U.S.

Army as a volunteer, serving in the medical corps until 1943 with the rank of Staff Sergeant. In 1943 he joined the Army Air Corps and was assigned as a navigator to the 8th Air Force, with the rank of second lieutenant. In January 1944, on a bombing mission against V-1 sites on the French coast, his B-17 was hit by flack. He parachuted from his burning plane and was captured by the Germans. He was a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft 1, on the Baltic Sea, until liberated by the Russians in May 1945. He was honorably discharged with the rank of first lieutenant in December 1945.
After the war he returned to Texas and received his Masters in Journalism from the University of Texas in 1947. He married Mary Hudson that year. He taught Journalism at Southwest Texas State Teachers College from 1947 to 1957. He received a Fulbright teaching grant and taught at the Gymnasium in Assen, the Netherlands, from 1954 to 1955. From 1957 to 1962 he taught Journalism at the University of Florida.
Joe received a Danforth Foundation Grant in 1959 and was awarded his Ph.D. in Mass Communications from the University of Iowa, 1960. He contributed a chapter on “International search for Ethical Controls,” based on his Ph.D. dissertation, to International Communications edited by Fischer and Merrill (1970).
He joined the United States Information Agency (USIA) as a Press Attache in 1962. He served in Tehran, Iran from 1962 to 1965, working extensively in support of community relations programs, including the Shah”s land reform program, on the part of the U.S. and Iranian governments. Joe served as Press Attache in Istanbul, Turkey from 1966 to 1969 during a period of sometimes tense U. S.-Turkish relations.
He moved to Washington, D.C. in 1969 and was assigned to Lagos, Nigeria from 1972 to 1975 and to Tel Aviv, Israel from 1975 to 1977. Joe received the USIA Meritorious Honor Award in 1971. In March 1979 he was sent on a special assignment to Israel for Middle East peace talks between President Carter and Prime Minister Begin. In his final USIA assignment he was in charge of the office preparing daily and periodic summaries of foreign media reactions to U.S. policies for distribution to the White House, State, Defense and Treasury Departments.
Joe retired from USIA in 1979 and then taught Journalism at the University of Texas School of Journalism in Austin, from 1979 to 1986. He returned to Washington in 1986 and lived in Glen Echo, Md. until moving to Ingleside in 2006.
Joe was preceded in death by his parents, and his sisters Dolores Lancaster and Kate Vilven. He is survived by his wife Mary Vogel and his three sons, Brian of Washington D.C., Chris and wife Marcia of Silver Spring, Md., and Michael and wife Julie of Columbia, Md., and by seven grandchildren. He is also survived by his sister Patricia Vogel of San Marcos and nieces Judy Shaw and husband Milton of Luling and Jane Spillmann and husband Doug of Lockhart. He is also survived by nephews Bill Lancaster and wife Bobbie of Lindale and Mel Lancaster and wife Karen of Round Rock.
Burial will be at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va. on April 24, 2007.