Thank you for posting on the correct date and linking here.
Ernie Pyle was very important to the public. My great-aunt, Deloris Hopper Pettit, kept a diary every day from when she learned to write, about 1915, until she died in 1980. Her son and my father collected a lot of the volumes, many of which were in daily-schedule books that my grandfather, a doctor, got from drug or medical-supply companies. I read them, along with the complete works of Louis L’Amour, when stuck in Missouri for the summers.
She noted, among, “How the chickens were growing,” and “Who didn’t pay for their washing,” when Ernie Pyle died.