Henry Loomis; advanced the Voice of America; at 89

HENRY LOOMIS (US Information Agency)

NEW YORK - Henry Loomis, who extended the reach and defended the independence of the Voice of America as its director in the late 1950s and 1960s before resigning in a clash with President Lyndon B. Johnson, died Nov. 2 in Jacksonville, Fla., where he lived. He was 89.

The cause was complications from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Pick's diseases, said his wife, Jacqueline.

Mr. Loomis was also president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the 1970s.

A physicist by training, Mr. Loomis became director of the Voice of America in 1958, under President Eisenhower. Determined to expand its operations, he increased the Voice of America's broadcasting power and set up transmitters in previously unserved countries such as Liberia and the Philippines.

Convinced that English was becoming the preeminent international language, he began broadcasting programs for less-than-fluent foreign listeners in Special English, a simplified language that relied on a core vocabulary of 1,500 words. Scripts were read at a deliberate pace of nine lines a minute.

Mr. Loomis was still in the post in 1965 when the Voice of America came under increasing pressure from the White House not to report awkward foreign policy news, notably the growing military involvement of the United States in Southeast Asia. Mr. Loomis resigned, and in an accusatory farewell speech said, "The Voice of America is not the voice of the administration."

Henry Loomis was born in Tuxedo Park, N.Y. His father, Alfred, amassed a fortune financing public utilities. After the 1929 Wall Street crash, which left him untouched, Alfred Loomis indulged his fascination with science by setting up a physics laboratory in an old mansion in Tuxedo Park. Henry worked with his father on brain-wave research while still a teenager and later took part in the laboratory's pioneering research on radar.

Mr. Loomis left Harvard in his senior year to join the Navy and was assigned to the staff of the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor. He created radar training schools and accompanied airplane pilots and ships' officers to demonstrate how to use the new technology, which was initially regarded with some suspicion.

After leaving the Navy with a Bronze Star, Mr. Loomis did graduate work in physics at the University of California at Berkeley, and spent four years as assistant to the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before taking a series of government jobs.

In 1972, President Nixon appointed Mr. Loomis to be president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit created by Congress to be responsible for channeling money to public television stations. Mr. Loomis left the job in 1978, as the Carter administration began restoring power to PBS.