A nationally renowned journalist who made his home in Seminole County for over two decades died last week at the age of 107.

Vance H. Trimble, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for exposing nepotism and financial misdeeds among members of Congress, died June 16 at a rest home in Sulphur. He was a graduate of Wewoka High School and returned to live in Wewoka in 1999, following an illustrious journalism and book writing career.

Trimble was born July 6, 1913, in Harrison, Arkansas. His father, Guy L. Trimble, was a lawyer and the town’s mayor. His mother, Josie, was a poet and writer, directing plays at the Crystal Theatre in Okemah, where the family moved in 1920.

At the age of 14, Trimble was hired as a cub reporter at the Okemah Daily Leader, working after school for $1.50 a week. Trimble’s first assignment in 1927 was walking up and down Broadway, looking in every store for newsworthy items.

That job launched his lifelong career, which took him to national journalism heights and later to book writing. His biography of Walmart founder Sam Walton, written in 1990, sold 700,000 copies.

Trimble’s family moved to Wewoka while Vance was a freshman in high school, where he continued his career as a courthouse reporter and sports editor at the Wewoka Times-Democrat while finishing high school.

It was while Trimble was working on the school paper, The Little Tiger, that he met his future wife, Elzene Miller.

“When Elzene sold an ad for 50 cents or a dollar, we would confiscate a nickel, hurry to the downtown drugstore, slide into a back booth near the phono-graph, and with two straws, split a Coke and plan our future,” Trimble said in a 2013 interview with Karen Anson of the Seminole Producer.

The couple married at age 18 and Elzene’s $10 wedding ring stayed on her hand the rest of her life. They had one daughter, Carol Ann Nordeheimer, who passed away in February of this year.

When they married, Elzene worked at a florist for $7 a week and Vance had just been named night editor of the Seminole newspaper, earning $20 a week.

As newspaper jobs began drying up with the onset of the Great Depression, the Trimbles spent a year and a half driving a $35 beat-up 1926 Chevy from Florida to Colorado, eking out a living by repairing typewriters and adding machines. They eventually returned to Oklahoma and Vance resumed his newspaper career at The Seminole Morning News, Seminole Producer, Muskogee Phoenix, Okmulgee Times and the Maud Enterprise, where he investigated a robbery by Pretty Boy Floyd. At the Tulsa Tribune, Trimble was fired for joining the writers’ union.

The Trimbles then moved to Texas, where Vance worked for dailies in Beaumont, Port Arthur and Houston. During World War II, Trimble was a Signal Corps staff sergeant and edited the Army newspaper in Camp Beale, California.

In 1955, Trimble was promoted to the Scripps Howard national bureau in Washington, D.C., where he was an editor and covered Congress and the White House.

After daily deadline pressure, Trimble said he found his new job to be “slow” and began to haunt the halls of the Capitol. He became curious about Capitol nepotism and payroll abuse and spent six months researching his story before breaking the scandal in January 1959. The page one story in the Washington Daily News earned Trimble the coveted Pulitzer Prize.

Trimble revealed that Rep. Steven V. Carter (D-Iowa) was paying his 19-year-old son, a part-time college student, $11,873 a year — the equivalent of $107,000 today — as a member of his public relations staff. After outrage among his constituents, Carter reduced his son’s salary to $6,400.

Trimble also found that Rep. Randall S. Harmon (D-Ind.) was paying his wife a secretarial salary and was being reimbursed $100 each month for renting office space, which turned out to be his front porch. (His monthly mortgage payment totaled $54.40.) “So what?” Harmon complained to Time magazine. “It’s nobody’s business.” While brandishing a gun, Harmon reportedly said, “I figure on throwing the fear of God into that Vance Trimble.”

Trimble’s picture appeared on a bulletin board in a House office building, with the note: “Beware of this man — he’s dangerous.”

In 1963, Trimble was appointed editor of the Kentucky Post in Covington, Kentucky, where he ran a bright, crusading newspaper for two decades. He turned author in 1970, first publishing “The Uncertain Miracle” on hyperbaric medicine.

When Elzene died in 1999, Trimble brought her back to Wewoka to be buried beside her mother. Their 5,000-book collection was donated to the Wewoka Public Library. When space could not be found for it, Trimble donated $25,000 for an expansion.

Trimble was named to the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame in 1974 and gave an interview to the hall as recently as last year. Skilled in architecture, he designed Frank Lloyd Wright-style houses for his family in Houston, Chevy Chase, Maryland., and Covington.

Describing his investigative series on Congress that led to the Pulitzer Prize, Trimble told Time magazine in 1959: “I’ve been an investigative reporter for a long time, and some things just smell. You know there’s something boiling away under the surface if you can just take time to dig it out.”