Howard L. Boorman

Boorman married twice. He married Margaret Stelle in 1948, in Beijing, where their son, Scott, was born in 1949. In 1970, he married Mary Houghton, whose father, Henry Spencer Houghton, helped to found the Peking Union Medical College. She died in 2000. Boorman died February 17th 2008.

In 1971, he and his son Scott, collaborated on a book that drew a parallel between Chinese military and diplomatic strategy and the Chinese game of go.

After the war, he entered the graduate program at Yale, leaving in 1947 to become a Foreign Service Officer. He was posted to Beijing, but after the Chinese Revolution of 1949, Boorman was posted to Hong Kong where the Consulate developed resources to monitor and translate the mainland press. He returned to work at Columbia University, where he won the Rockefeller Public Service Award in 1954–55. He began work on the four volume Biographical Dictionary of Republican China in 1955. In 1967, Boorman joined the History Department of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. He retired from teaching in 1984.

Howard Boorman was born Chicago, Illinois to William Ryland and Verna Lyon Boorman, who moved to Grinnell, Iowa, in 1935, where he graduated from Grinnell High School. After studying briefly at Grinnell College, Boorman finished his undergraduate education at University of Wisconsin in 1941. He first entered the Department of State, then joined the Navy. He studied Japanese at the Navy Language School in Boulder, Colorado, and became Lieutenant Japanese Language Officer. He served at the Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Area, which was located in Hawai’i, served a translator for General LeMay’s 21st Bomber Command. and was attached to the Marine Division that accepted the surrender of Japanese military, assisting with Japanese POWs.

Howard Lyon Boorman (b. 11 September 1920 Chicago d. 17 February 2008) was a United States Foreign Service Officer who after retirement became best known for organizing and editing the Biographical Dictionary of Republican China a standard reference work commonly referred to simply as “Boorman.”

The four-volume biographical dictionary contains biographical articles on 600 prominent figures of the Republican period (1911–1949). Although it was published before much new material became available, it remains a valuable starting point.