Francis William Herron was born in Boone, Iowa, on August 9, 1914. He attended the University of Missouri where he received his journalism degree in 1934. His first job after graduation was as the news editor for the Sibley Gazette-Tribune in Sibley, Iowa. In 1941 he became an associate in the Institute of Current World Affairs. The following year, Herron traveled to Argentina to study at Cordoba University. He joined the United States Foreign Service in 1946, and was posted as the assistant press officer in the American Embassy in Buenos Aires. For more than ten years he served in a variety of positions in American Embassies in places such as Quito, San Salvador, and Montevideo. Returning to the United States, Herron first took a job with the State Department and then with the Bureau of Public Affairs. In 1964, he once again found himself in South America, this time in the American Embassy in Venezuela. He retired from this posting in 1970. During his retirement he wrote about current affairs and was a consultant for the Brookings Foundation. Francis W. Herron died in 1978, at the age of sixty-three.