Stanton Delaplane

Stanton Hill ("Stan") Delaplane (12 October 1907 – 18 April 1988) was a travel writer, credited with introducing Irish coffee to the United States. Called "last of the old irreplaceables" by fellow-columnist Herb Caen, he worked for the San Francisco Chronicle for 53 years, winning a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1942.

Delaplane was born in Chicago, Illinois, and attended high school there and in Santa Barbara and Monterey, California.

Delaplane's career as a journalist began as a writer for Apéritif Magazine from 1933 to 1936, when he joined the San Francisco Chronicle as a reporter He won the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting in 1942 for a depiction of the State of Jefferson, a state that residents of far northern California and southern Oregon proposed semi-seriously in order to publicize their grievances. He also won National Headliner Awards in 1946 and 1959. In 1944 and 1945 he served as a war correspondent in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II.

After drinking Irish coffee at Shannon Airport in Ireland, Delaplane convinced Jack Koeppler, then owner of the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco, to start serving it at his bar. On November 10, 1952, the two spent hours perfecting the Irish method for floating the cream on top of the coffee, reportedly to the point where Delaplane almost passed out on the cable car tracks outside.

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