OBITS - WASHINGTON STAR ALUMNI

Haynes Bonner Johnson (July 9, 1931 - May 24, 2013) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, best-selling author, and TV analyst.

Haynes Bonner Johnson (July 9, 1931 - May 24, 2013) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, best-selling author, and TV analyst. He reported on most of the major news stories of the latter half of the 20th century and was widely regarded as one of the nation's top political commentators.

He began his newspaper career in 1956 as a reporter for the Wilmington (Delaware) News-Journal. In 1957, Johnson joined the Washington Evening Star where he worked for 12 years, variously as a reporter, copy editor, night city editor and national reporter. He joined The Washington Post in 1969, serving first as a National correspondent, as a special assignment correspondent at home and abroad, then as the paper's Assistant Managing Editor and finally, as a national affairs columnist.

Johnson won a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished national reporting in 1966 for his coverage of the civil rights crisis in Selma, Alabama. The award marked the first time in Pulitzer Prize history that a father and son both received awards for reporting; his father, Malcolm Johnson, won in 1949 for the New York Sun series, "Crime on the Waterfront," which was the basis for the Academy Award-winning film, On the Waterfront.

He was the author or editor of sixteen books, five of them best-sellers, including his most recent work, co-authored with Washington Post political reporter Dan Balz, The Battle for America: 2008.

Johnson was born in New York City. He earned his bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri in 1952 and his Master's in American History from the University of Wisconsin in 1956. Johnson served in the U.S. Army as a first lieutenant in artillery during the Korean War. He has held academic appointments at Duke, Princeton, Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania and George Washington University and served as the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of Maryland from 1998 until his death in 2013.

Attribution: wikipedia.org/

On May 14, 2013, in Washington, Ed Prina was a prize-winning journalist, served in the U.S. Navy in World War II and Korean War (retired as captain in USNR), and held two Syracuse University degrees. Ed was a retired Washington Bureau Chief in Military Correspondent from Copley News Service. He had been a member of the National Press Club for 58 years. He covered every Secretary of Defense from Forest to Weinberger.

Robert W. Adams, Shoppers Guide owner Thursday, April 30, 2013

Robert W. Adams, 81, a former delivery truck driver for the old Washington Star newspaper who later owned and operated the Prince George’s Shoppers Guide tabloid, died of pneumonia April 30 at a hospital in West Palm Beach, Fla.

His daughter, Karen Orofino, confirmed his death.

Robert Wayne Adams was born in Lafayette, Ala. He moved to the Washington area in 1940 and graduated in 1950 from Hyattsville High School.

He served in the Army during the Korean War. For many years, before the newspaper closed in 1981, Mr. Adams was a delivery truck driver for the Washington Star. He then started the Shoppers Guide, which he operated for 30 years.

Six months ago, he moved from Hyattsville to West Palm Beach.

Attribution: Bart Barnes - Washingtonpost.com

Lowell Mellett - Inducted to The Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame April 27, 2013

Lowell Mellett

Mellett ended his journalism career as a nationally syndicated columnist for the Washington Star, ending his "On the Other Hand" column in 1956 because of ill health; Mellett died on April 6, 1960. Upon Mellett's death J. Russell Wiggins, executive editor of the Washington Post, called him "one of the greatest newspapermen of the country and of Washington. He was a gifted writer and a brilliant editor whose work will long be remembered in his profession."

The late Lowell Mellett, an Elwood native who was a newspaper executive in Washington before becoming a top aide to President Franklin Roosevelt. Mellett’s journalism career started at age 16 when the The Muncie Star sent him to cover the 1900 Democratic National Convention. He worked at several newspapers around the country and overseas during World War I before becoming editor of Collier’s Weekly and, later, editor of the Washington Daily News in the 1930s. He held several posts in the Roosevelt administration before leaving government in 1944 to start writing what became a nationally syndicated newspaper column that continued until his retirement in 1956. He died in 1960.

Veteran Journalist of The Washington Star. Gus Constantine joined The Washington Times from at or near its beginning and spent more than 20 years there, specializing in coverage of Africa and the Far East. Retired in 2007. At the Times he was known among his colleagues for his encyclopedic knowledge of world history and his devotion to his work and his family.

Birth: Jan. 24, 1929, New York, USA Death: Jan. 29, 2013, Fairfax County Virginia, USA

Former Times’ foreign desk editor Gus Constantine dies

Gus Constantine, a longtime editor in The Washington Times newsroom whose passion for knowledge was matched only by his love for family, died Jan. 29. He was 84.
Originally a history major, Mr. Constantine joined The Times when it opened in 1982, and worked as an editor on the foreign desk until 2008. In his nearly three decades at the paper, he came to be known as a dedicated and tenacious editor with an encyclopedic knowledge of history and the world.

2012 award of the National
Endowment for the Art’s
highest honor, the
National Heritage Fellowship

Mike Auldridge (December 30, 1938 – December 29, 2012) was widely acknowledged as a premier resophonic guitar (the instrument formerly referred to as a Dobro) player. He played with The Seldom Scene for many years, creating a fusion of bluegrass with jazz, folk and rock.
Born in Washington, D.C.,Auldridge started playing guitar at the age of 13. His main influence through his early years was Josh Graves who also sold him his first Dobro. A 1967 graduate of The University of Maryland, Auldridge worked as a graphic artist for a commercial art firm in Bethesda, Maryland and then for the now defunct Washington Star-News. He did not start playing music full-time until the Washington Star-News folded in 1976.
Auldridge last played with Darren Beachley and The Legends of the Potomac bluegrass band. Past bands include Emerson and Waldron, Cliff Waldron and the New Shades of Grass, Seldom Scene (of which he was a founding member), Chesapeake, The Good Deale Bluegrass Band, and John Starling and Carolina Star (which featured three original members of The Seldom Scene). Mike was also a member of the touring bands of Lyle Lovett and Emmylou Harris.
Auldridge worked with Paul Beard (Beard Guitars) to produce the Beard Mike Auldridge Models of square-neck resophonic guitars, including an 8-string version. Just one day prior to his 74th birthday, he died on December 29, 2012 in hospice care in Silver Spring, Maryland after a lengthy battle with cancer.

Attribution: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Auldridge

Mike Auldridge, founding member of D.C.’s Seldom Scene bluegrass group, dies at 73

Mike Auldridge, a bluegrass musician whose broad knowledge of many musical forms helped redefine and modernize the steel guitar known as the Dobro, died Dec. 29 at his home in Silver Spring. He died a day before his 74th birthday.

Washington Star Writer-in-Residence

Before he became known the world over as a playwright, Larry L. King was a reporter, a Capitol Hill aide, a raconteur, a brawler and a full-time Texan. He helped define the freewheeling New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s, partly with an article he wrote for Playboy magazine in 1974 about the Chicken Ranch, a house of ill repute in southeast Texas.
A few years later, Mr. King and several collaborators refashioned his article into a musical comedy about a brothel that operated for years under the averted gaze of the law. “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” ran on Broadway for almost four years and has been in almost continuous production since. In 1982, it was made into a Burt Reynolds-Dolly Parton movie — which Mr. King loathed.
Mr. King, who had lived in Washington since the 1950s, died Dec. 20 at Chevy Chase House, a retirement facility in the District.
He was 83. He had emphysema, his wife, Barbara Blaine, said.
He was the author of seven plays and more than a dozen books, including memoirs, a novel and collections of articles and letters. In 1982, he won an Emmy Award as the writer and narrator of a CBS documentary, “The Best Little Statehouse in Texas,” that looked at the legislature’s behind-the-scenes horse-trading.
Mr. King also was known for his outsized personality, full-bore drinking and an ability to tell outrageously droll stories in a profanity-laced drawl that was almost indistinguishable from his writing voice. “His certain knowledge of his origins informs his point of view and his prose style,” New York Times book critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in a review of Mr. King’s 1971 memoir, “Confessions of a White Racist.” “And this confidence in his roots is what makes Mr. King’s writing so alive, dramatic, warm, and funny.”

Joe L. Allbritton, a self-made millionaire who built a Washington communications empire and led the once venerable Riggs National Bank as it became embroiled in a massive money-laundering scheme involving Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, died Dec. 12 at a hospital in Houston. He was 87.
He died of heart ailments, said Frederick J. Ryan Jr., president of Allbritton Communications and president and chief executive of Politico.
The son of a Houston sandwich-shop owner, the hard-charging Mr. Allbritton dealt in real estate, banks and mortuaries until he was drawn to the District by a new challenge: reviving an ailing afternoon newspaper in the nation’s power center.
Mr. Allbritton bought the Washington Star in 1974. He won entry into the District’s elite political circles not only as a media magnate but also because of friendships with other Texans who had made their fortunes in the capital city, including lobbyist Jack Valenti and Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworksi.
Federal regulations over media ownership forced him to sell the Star just four years after he bought it. But he retained valuable broadcast properties, including the ABC affiliate that soon took his initials (WJLA, Channel 7), and forged ahead with other enterprises including NewsChannel 8, one of the country’s first 24-hour news channels.

Paul B. Moore, a former Evening Sun reporter and editor who later became a public relations executive, died Nov. 27 from complications of prostate cancer at his Homeland residence. He was 84.
"Paul was a very conscientious reporter and a very conscientious person. He was very talented and what he did, he did well," said Helen Delich Bentley, a former newsroom colleague who later became a congresswoman and federal maritime commissioner.
"As a reporter, he was always fair, and wherever he went always looked for something interesting and challenging," said Mrs. Bentley. "He was never rude and was a genuinely decent person."
"Paul was frequently in all the chaos and breaking news that descended on The Evening Sun. He was Mr. Calm. He was the guy everyone turned to. He was the voice of order and calm," said David Culhane, who later joined CBS News in New York City. "Paul was always the safe and steady hand when we were in the middle of trouble spots."
The son of a real estate broker and a homemaker, Paul Benedict Moore was born in Rockaway Beach, N.Y., and graduated in 1946 from Baldwin High School in Baldwin, N.Y.
Mr. Moore earned a bachelor's degree in economics in 1950 from Mount St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg.
In 1950, he began his newspaper career as a district circulation manager for Newsday Inc. in Garden City, N.Y., before enlisting in the Air Force that year.
From 1950 to 1954, Mr. Moore edited an Air Force weekly newspaper and after leaving the service joined the staff of The Frederick News, where he was a reporter for a year.
Mr. Moore began his career on The Evening Sun in 1955, working as a reporter, rewrite man and finally an assistant city editor.
A versatile writer, Mr. Moore covered such diverse stories as the annual Maryland State Fair in Timonium, the 1956 National Soap Box Derby in Akron, Ohio, that featured a Baltimore challenger who eventually lost the race, and local and national politics.

Joseph B. Kelly, the longtime racing editor of the old Washington Star who was a thoroughbred historian and was known as the dean of Maryland turf writers, died Nov. 26 of cancer at a hospice in Timonium, Md. He was 94. The death was confirmed by his son, Baltimore Sun reporter Jacques Kelly. Mr. Kelly began his career in 1943 in the sports department of the Sun, where he covered general sports for three years before joining the racing beat. On Oct. 30, 1947, Mr. Kelly and his newsroom colleague, Jim McManus, later known as ABC sportscaster Jim McKay, made broadcasting history when they appeared on the first program televised by a Baltimore TV station. The reporters covered the fifth and sixth races from Pimlico Race Course for WMAR (Channel 2). “I wasn’t fazed at all or the least bit nervous because TV then didn’t have the impact that it does today,” said Mr. Kelly, who described the broadcast 50 years later in a 1997 interview with the Sun. He returned to the airwaves in 1948, when he was present at the first televised Preakness. Citation won the Preakness that year and remained Mr. Kelly’s all-time favorite horse. Mr. Kelly left the Sun in 1951 to work for a horse racing association. In 1955, he joined the Washington Star, where he wrote a column and was racing editor. When the paper folded in 1981, Mr. Kelly was media director at Laurel Park until 1984.

Tom joined the old Washington Star in 1953 at age 17. It was a 14-year career that saw him cover a lot of the nation's triumph and tragedy. He made a beautiful, poignant image of a shrouded Jacqueline Kennedy hugging her children at their father's gravesite – choosing to go tight rather than do what everyone else did – go wide to include the eternal flame marking the President's resting place.

The now-famous shot
Photo: Tom Hoy

Willmott Harsant Lewis, Jr., aka Bin passed away peacefully Sept.10, 2012 at the Genesis Health Center in Lebanon, NH surrounded by loved ones.
Bin grew up in Washington, DC, graduated from St. Paul’s School in 1945 and attended Yale University. Bin then went to work for the Washington Evening Star for 25 years in many capacities including Production Manager and Business Manager. He was also a director and vice president of the Washington Star Communications. In 1980 he moved to the Upper Conn. River Valley to be publisher of the Valley News. He ran the Valley News until 1993 taking it from an evening paper to a morning paper and adding a Sunday edition. He is credited with taking both newspapers to the forefront of technology in the industry. He was one of the founders of the “PAGE”, Publishers Associated to Gain Economies that he co-founded to help the small newspapers.
Bin always felt it important to give back to the communities that he was involved in. In Washington he served on many boards including Suburban Hospital, National Capital Gun Club, and the American Newspaper Publishers Association. . He had a great presence in the Upper Valley including Rotary International, United Way President, Steering committee that started ILEAD (Institute for Lifelong Education at Dartmouth), President Eastman Community Board, The Montshire Museum, and Lebanon College.

Raymond Franklin Fristoe, 100, of Luray, Saturday, Sept. 8, 2012.

Raymond Franklin Fristoe, 100, of Luray, died on Saturday, September 8, 2012, at his home.
He was born on May 8, 1912, in Front Royal and was a son of the late Clarence Edwin Fristoe and Ester Maggie Triplett Fristoe.
Mr. Fristoe graduated from Massanutten Military Academy and served as a Merchant Marine during World War II. He retired in 1977 from the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C., and worked as a proofreader for the Washington Star Newspaper . He was a member of the Main Street Baptist Church, Lafayette Lodge 137 A.F.&A.M. and the Luray American Legion, all of Luray, and was a former member of the Bentonville Baptist Church.
On March 21, 1981, he married Jean Housden Fristoe, who survives.
Published in Northern Virginia Daily on September 12, 2012

John F. Stacks, Writer and Editor, Dies at 70

John F. Stacks, a former reporter and senior editor at Time magazine and the author of a well-regarded biography of James B. Reston, the influential editor and columnist for The New York Times, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 70. The cause was prostate cancer, his son Benjamin said. In “Scotty: James B. Reston and the Rise and Fall of American Journalism,” an admiring but not uncritical biography published in 2003 to mostly positive reviews, Mr. Stacks traced the career of one of America’s most powerful Washington journalists while chronicling the passing of an era in which the press and politicians shared a more intimate relationship than they do today. To Mr. Stacks, Mr. Reston’s career — stretching from the 1930s into the early ’90s — was emblematic of how journalism changed over his own lifetime. “What I tried to do in this book was to show how fabulous his reporting was when he was in his heyday and how much the country benefited from that kind of information, that kind of subtlety,” Mr. Stacks said in a 2003 interview with the PBS program “NewsHour.” “And I think we’re missing that today.” Mr. Stacks wrote three other books, one as a ghostwriter for John J. Sirica, the federal judge who presided over the trial of the Watergate burglars. The book, “To Set the Record Straight,” a memoir published in 1979, was a best seller. Mr. Stacks was just a few years out of Yale when he joined Time in 1967. He was part of an ambitious generation of Ivy League-educated journalists who had entered the field expecting to wield influence with powerful figures and instead played a role in toppling them. Mr. Stacks was rising through Time’s ranks in 1973 when he was sent to Washington to help manage the magazine’s coverage of the widening Watergate scandal. He was later appointed Time’s chief of correspondents and held the posts of executive editor and deputy managing editor at the magazine. He interviewed a number of world leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro. John Fultz Stacks was born on Feb. 3, 1942, in Lancaster, Pa., to Helena and Harry Stacks, the editor of The Lancaster Intelligencer Journal. He received a bachelor’s degree in political science from Yale in 1964 and went to work for The Washington Star, a daily newspaper that closed in 1981. Mr. Stacks married Dora Jo Aungst in 1964. They had two sons. The older, John Jr., was killed in a car accident in 1988. The marriage ended in divorce in 1985, the same year Mr. Stacks married Carol Cox, a psychotherapist, who survives him. Attribution: By LESLIE KAUFMAN, NYTimes

Henry E. Nichols, Friday, July 20, 2012; Lawyer, Real Estate Columnist

Henry E. Nichols, a retired lawyer who had a private practice in Washington and specialized in real estate law, died July 20 at the Carriage Hill Bethesda assisted living facility. He was 88. He had complications from a fall, according to his wife, Mary Ann Nichols. Mr. Nichols moved to the Washington area in the late 1940s. He had a private real estate practice in Washington until the mid-1980s. He wrote a column on real estate that appeared in the old Washington Star newspaper. From the early 1970s until 1990, Mr. Nichols served as chairman of the board for the Hamilton Federal Savings and Loan Association. He was also an original member of the board of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. Henry Eliot Nichols was born in New York City and was a graduate of Yale University and the University of Virginia law school. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II. In his spare time, he judged weightlifting and physique competitions. His memberships included the Cosmos Club.

Lorraine Fricka, 30 years at the Star, May 5, 2012

Lorraine Ann Rich Fricka, formerly of Washington, DC, passed away peacefully at Taylor Melfa House, Denton, MD, where she resided for the past three years. Born in Bath, Maine, she was the only child of the late Fred P. and Laura A. Dalton Rich, and step-daughter to the late Edward J. Bernier. Much of Lorraine’s early years were spent in Prince Edward Island, Canada, where she was raised by her maternal grandmother. She returned to the States to reside with her mother and step-father in Rockland, Maine, where she graduated from Rockland High School. Memories from high school, she always said, were her best and most favorite. The family moved to Brunswick, Maine, where Lorraine worked as a bookkeeper at Montgomery Ward’s. She also worked at the Bath Iron Works and attended nursing school at Deering Nursing School in Farmington, Maine. Lorraine proudly and honorably served her country in the United Sates Navy as a Pharmacist’s Mate, Second Class, and was based in Bainbridge, MD and Camp Lejeune, NC. Lorraine moved to Washington, DC in the late 40’s and graduated from the Washington School for Secretaries. She also attended a modeling school. Lorraine began her career at the Evening Star, later renamed the Washington Star, in the advertising department in the early 50’s.

Leon “Lee” Cohn passed away on March 19, 2012, at the Washington Home’s hospice from complications due to Lymphoma. His family, including his three children, was by his side. Lee’s passion for journalism became evident as early as grade school, when he and his friend produced a school newspaper, and never ebbed. He was a distinguished editor of his high school paper and of the Syracuse Daily Orange and upon college graduation became the one-man editorial staff for West Virginia’s weekly, the Clarksburg News. His career took root as a reporter for Congressional Quarterly and for the Washington bureau of the Wall Street Journal and as editor of Reporting on Governments and associate editor of the Kiplinger Washington Letter, his last job, which he held for 12 years before retiring in 1992. By far his favorite job, though, was reporter and news analyst on the national staff of the Washington Star, where he covered the economy from 1957-1979.

PEELER WILLIAM F. PEELER A mainstay in the newsroom of the old Washington Star, died February 12, 2012 peacefully at home after multiple long illnesses. Mr. Peeler served as sports editor of the Star from 1961 to 1971. He ended up as news editor, editing the front page and the A section for the paper's last five years. He worked almost 30 years for the Star. Mr. Peeler started his newspaper career in 1938 as a sportswriter for the Salisbury, NC, Post. He became Sports Editor the next year. He moved to the Greensboro Daily News as assistant sports editor in 1943 and six months later was named the telegraph editor. In 1945 he joined the Allentown (PA) Morning Call, where he spent four years as telegraph editor and three years as assistant city editor before moving to Washington. As Sports Editor he persuaded the management of the Star and Gen. Pete Quesada, then running the Senators, to sponsor a Knothole Club for youngsters. Some 53,000 membership applications were sent to the Star. The kids could attend games free on some Saturdays. After two seasons the program was dropped because too many parents dropped off youngsters and left, creating the possibility of liabilities.

Robert Striar, D.C. photojournalist, dies at 88

Robert Striar, 88, a Washington photojournalist who chronicled the city’s political, cultural and social history for decades, died Jan. 28 at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. He had complications from a broken hip. The death was confirmed by his daughter Diane Striar. Mr. Striar learned photography during Navy service in Europe during World War II before settling in the Washington area. In the late 1940s, he started City News Bureau, a photo-news syndicate that at one time had more than 100 newspaper clients. He ran the company until around 2000. His images were featured in newspapers, such as The Washington Post, and magazines, including Life. He worked closely with the late Betty Beale, who wrote a society column for the old Washington Star. He covered presidential inaugurations, funerals of statesmen, the 1963 March on Washington, embassy events and visiting dignitaries. In the 1960s, he and photographer Carlo A. Maggi published a monthly magazine, Washington Illustrated. Robert Striar, a District resident, was born in Bangor, Maine, and raised in New York’s Bronx and Queens boroughs. He made ink drawings and developed an interest in wood-burning art. His work was exhibited at the Ratner Museum in Bethesda, among other local galleries. His wife, Marguerite Minsky, whom he married in 1950, died in 2008. Attribution: washingtonpost.com (Adam Bernstein) Published: February 9

JFK In The Crossfire Credit: Robert Striar

Phil A. Gentilcore; Mailroom Foreman January 23, 2012

Philip Anthony Gentilcore, born: April 1923, passed away on Monday, January 23, 2012. He had suffered from cancer for many years and was being treated; but finally succumbed due to pneumonia. Phil served in the Navy during WWII, after which he became employed in the Star mailroom. He eventually rose to Foreman and remained in that position until the Star closed in 1981. For the last few years of his career he moved to the Washington Post mailroom. During retirement he thoroughly enjoyed family activities.

Walter McMain Oates, news photographer, dies at 84

Walter McMain Oates, a Washington news photographer who covered nine presidential administrations, died Dec. 30, 2011. He was 84. Mr. Oates started his newspaper career as a copy boy with the Washington Star, and worked for The Washington Times until he retired in the early 1990s. As a member of the White House News Photographers Association, Mr. Oates had the privilege of working many black tie events at the White House and gaining access to to presidents. Mr. Oates, also known as Mac, joined the Navy as a young man, serving his country for two years at the end of World War II. Though he loved his career and often spoke of the memories, Mr. Oates was most proud of his two children.

Lance Gay died last night - his health had been bad for a few weeks. He was taken to the hospital yesterday because he was having trouble breathing-his COPD had gotten worse. No word yet on services. I'm at work and don't have access to anyone else's email (I am guessing Joan's). If you do, can you forward the news. If not, I'll do it when I get home.No word yet on services. -Jody
This is merely a quick notice. Details to follow when we know.

WASHINGTON - Lance Gay, who roamed Washington and the world as a senior correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service for more than two decades, died Sunday at his family's home in Brookville, Md., from respiratory failure. Gay, 67, had retired from Scripps Howard in 2006 but continued researching several historical writing projects in recent years.

Stroube J. Smith, a D.C. native whose long journalism career included service as an editor at U.S. News & World Report and a stint at The Washington Times, died on Oct. 30 in Lewisburg, Pa. He was 77.

Mr. Smith was born Aug. 21, 1934. He attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria and earned an English degree in 1956 from the University of Alabama.

He began his career in 1953 at Alabama's Tuscaloosa News, then moved three years later to the Birmingham News, the state's largest daily paper. Mr. Smith traveled overseas in 1959 to work in Germany for Stars and Stripes, then to Paris to work for the New York Times.

He returned stateside in 1964 to work for the now-defunct Washington Star, then went on to work for 20 years at U.S. News, for which he was a senior editor and columnist on regulatory and federal court issues.

Mr. Smith worked on the copy desk of The Washington Times from the early 1980s through 2005. He retired from full-time journalism in 1992, marking a nearly 40-year career in the industry.

John Anthony Neary Jr., ex-LIFE Magazine reporter who later took up metalsmithing, dies at 74

TESUQUE, N.M. — A family member says John Anthony Neary Jr., a journalist who worked as a LIFE magazine reporter and editor and later took up metalsmithing, has died.

Ben Neary, an Associated Press reporter in Wyoming, said his father died Friday at the family home in Tesuque of complications from cancer. He was 74.

A native of suburban Baltimore, John Anthony Neary Jr., began his career at the Washington Star and joined LIFE magazine in 1961. He was known for writing the 1969 LIFE cover story, "The Magical McCartney Mystery," about the hoax that Beatle Paul McCartney had died.

Neary and his wife, Joan, moved to Tesuque in 1973.

His remains are scheduled to be donated to the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.

Steve Daley, Chicago Tribune journalist at 62, October 2, 2011

Like the best reporters, Steve Daley could talk to anyone about anything, but unlike a lot of daily scribes, he could also write about anything.

In his 20-plus years as a journalist — including 15 at the Chicago Tribune — he covered sports, media and politics, even the occasional music review.

“Even when he started out in sports, he was a guy who always had a huge interest in everything,” said Mr. Daley’s friend, Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich. “He was just somebody whose mind was broad enough to understand that everything is everything else. The distinction between sports and politics really isn’t that big.”

Edna R. Patton; Evening Star Librarian, September 18, 2011

On Sunday, September 18, 2011, of Silver Spring, MD. Beloved wife of the late Donald Frazier Patton; loving mother of Donald "Wayne" Patton; sister of Mary Wells of Springfield, VA.

Ymelda Chavez Dixon; August 8, 2011 while with her daughter in Madrid, Spain at the age of 97.

Passed away August 8, 2011 while with her daughter in Madrid, Spain at the age of 97. Her wide circle of family and friends will miss her and treasure the memory of her indomitable personality, quick wit, devotion to country, and fierce love of literature. Ymelda was a long-time Washingtonian, coming as a girl to Washington from Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she was born, after her father, Dennis Chavez, was elected to the U.S. Congress from that state. He later was elected to the U.S. Senate where he served until his death in 1962.

Earl H. Voss, 89, a journalist with the old Washington Star newspaper and a government public affairs officer, died July 30 at Greenspring Village retirement community in Springfield, where he had lived for the past seven years. He had Parkinson’s disease and diabetes.From 1951 until 1964, Mr. Voss wrote foreign news and served as the Star’s diplomatic correspondent.
He won a Washington Newspaper Guild’s “Front Page” award in 1954 for interpretive reporting on the Far East. He was the author of “Nuclear Ambush: The Test Ban Trap” (1963), a book that explored U.S.-Soviet negotiations on nuclear disarmament and resulting implications for national security.

Bonnie E. Aikman, a feature writer and columnist in the Washington Evening Star's entertainment section, died June 20. She was 77.

Bonnie interviewed many Broadway and Hollywood stars for the newspaper, and innocently "fell in love with several," she often said. Through her column "DC Studios" she got to know such local radio and TV pioneers as "The Joy Boys" and "Cousin Cupcake."

After graduating from American University in 1955, she began her newspaper career as an assistant to famed theater critic Jay Carmody and pioneering TV critic Bernie Harrison.

Longtime journalist Tom Breen, who headed FLORIDA TODAYs Space Team coverage from 2000 to 2002, died suddenly at his home earlier this week, June 22, 2011, in Indian Harbour Beach, Fl, of cardiac arrest. He was 65, with a vigor and insatiable curiosity about life that led him back to school to pursue a late-in-life masters degree from Rollins College in Winter Park in 2005, and then a doctorate in liberal studies from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., which he still was pursuing. He completed "all but the dissertation," an academic saying that used to annoy him greatly. But for the past five years, he used his newfound academic credentials to teach as an adjunct professor of humanities at Brevard Community College on both the Palm Bay and Melbourne campuses. He also recently became a member of the Brevard County Historic Commission.

Philip Evans, journalist who helped launch Washington Times, dies at 77

By Emma Brown, Published: May 12

Philip Evans, a journalist who served as managing editor of the Washington Star during the 1970s and later helped launch the Washington Times, died May 8 of cancer at his home in Silver Spring. He was 77.

Mr. Evans began a journalism career after working as an oilfield roughneck in Morocco and an Army paratrooper. He wrote for the Associated Press and then became a top editor at the Baltimore Evening Sun, Annapolis Capital and Philadelphia Bulletin.

Carter, aka “Dee,” was born February 26, 1925, and raised outside of Washington, D.C. She died March 7, 2011.

After graduating from Bethesda -Chevy Chase High School 1943, she joined the Washington Star Newspaper, as a copy girl. Over the next 30 years she was the dicationist who filed the story when the US dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Unfamiliar with the term “atom,” she simply wrote “Adam” bomb. She covered White House events and interviewed countless celebrities including Rosy Greer (his shoulders were so wide he had to go sideways through a door), Clark Gable, Tony Curtis (who answered the hotel door wrapped in a towel), became the “TEEN” Editor, under a pen name Fifi Gorska, for a section dedicated to 13-19-year olds, a novelty for the late 1950s and 60s.

David S. Broder, 81, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and one of the most respected writers on national politics for four decades, died Wednesday at Capital Hospice in Arlington of complications from diabetes.

Mr. Broder was often called the dean of the Washington press corps - a nickname he earned in his late 30s in part for the clarity of his political analysis and the influence he wielded as a perceptive thinker on political trends in his books, articles and television appearances.

Malcolm Douglas Lamborne, 69, writer, editor, and teacher, died December 22, 2010 at his home in Warrenton, Virginia surrounded by his loved ones. The cause of death was lung cancer.
Douglas was born in Alexandria, Virginia, attended Gonzaga High School, and received a Masters Degree from American University in 1971. During his long career in journalism, Douglas worked as a reporter for The Washington Post, The Washington Star, and the Washington Times. He served as managing editor for Annapolitan Magazine, consulting editor for Inside Annapolis Magazine, and as a senior writer and editor for Catholic University. Douglas also taught at American University, Anne Arundel Community College and, more recently, Lord Fairfax Community College.

On Friday, December 10, 2010, Mrs. Naomi Bradford entered into eternal rest. Her husband, James J. Bradford predeceased her. Beloved mother of Patricia Long, Jacqueline Buggs, Roberto Anderson, James C., Franklin D. and Herbert L. Bradford.

Full obit and Guestbook: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/washingtonpost/obituary.aspx?n=naomi-w-bradford&pid=147159800

Burt Hoffman, Deputy Managing Editor; November 17, 2010

Burton Hoffman, 81, a Washington journalist for two decades who became editor in chief of National Journal magazine in the mid-1970s and had a second career on Capitol Hill and abroad as a political and economic consultant, died of lung cancer Nov. 17 in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

He owned a restaurant in the northern Thai city and had lived there intermittently for the past three years.
Mr. Hoffman moved to the Washington area in 1955 and was a reporter and editor with Congressional Quarterly before joining the Washington Star in 1958.

He spent 14 years at the newspaper, including stints on the city, national and foreign desks, and was promoted to assistant managing editor in 1968.

John Holusha, who reported on business affairs for The New York Times for nearly three decades, died on Thursday in Montclair, N.J. He was 67 and lived in Glen Ridge, N.J.

The cause was a heart attack, his son, Terry, said.

By Adam Bernstein
Monday, August 16, 2010; 11:44 AM

James J. Kilpatrick, 89, a fiery advocate of racial segregation as a Richmond newspaper editor in the 1950s who became a sparring partner of liberals on the television show "60 Minutes" and a syndicated columnist who offered conservative views on subjects ranging from politics to proper use of the English language, died Aug. 15 at George Washington University hospital. He had congestive heart failure.

Raymond G. Dick, 73, a former editor with the now-defunct Washington Star and editor of Nation's Cities Weekly, died after a long illness Sept. 21 in Austin, Texas.
Mr. Dick was a native of Lawrence, Mass. He spent most of his professional career as a journalist in Washington. He joined the Washington Evening Star in 1967 as a copy editor and over the next 10 years, he served as copy-desk chief, assistant news editor and assistant managing editor.
He was active in the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, serving as president in 1969.

Longtime Court journalist David Pike dies; November 5, 2007

Lyle Denniston | Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 1:58 pm
David Pike, who covered the Supreme Court for 11 years for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, died Monday night at his home in Washington, D.C., after suffering a heart attack. He was 68 years old. Pike had spent much of his career as a courthouse journalist, covering the U.S. District Court and the D.C. Circuit Court for the Washington Star. He later covered legal news for the National Law Journal, and was the first first-time journalist at the Supreme Court for the Los Angeles Daily Journal. He retired at the end of 2004, and was succeeded on the “beat” by Brent Kendall.

Charlotte S. Burton - April 23, 2010

Charlotte S. Burton, 85, formerly of Belvidere, entered into rest Friday, April 23, 2010. Born: October 26, 1924, to the late George M. Shipman, Jr., and Rachel W. Shipman, both of Belvidere. Personal: She attended Belvidere schools and graduated from Vassar College in 1945. She worked for the Easton Express, the Washington Star and the Belvidere News, and in social services at Warren Hospital.

Doris K. Deakin Writer

Doris K. Deakin, 82, a freelance writer who contributed stories to The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Baltimore Sun, died April 21 at a nursing home in Warren, R.I. She had complications from Alzheimer's disease.

Beloved wife of the late Thomas Armat, Jr.; and cherished mother of Virginia Armat Hurt, died at her home February 16, 2010, surrounded by the love of her family with whom she had lived since 1999. Daughter of George Marsh Newall and Anna Marie Walch, she was born in Cheshire, England, October 3, 1917. She was raised in Syracuse, NY. and attended Syracuse University, majoring in fine arts.

Donnie Radcliffe, 80, a Washington Post journalist who chronicled first ladies and high society from the Watergate era to the Clinton administration, died Feb. 19 at her home in South Acworth, N.H. She had lung, thyroid and adrenal cancer, her son said.

DEWITT "Dick" SLAY (Age 80) Of Haig Point, SC, died peacefully, Thursday, April 30, 2009, at his home on Daufuskie Island, SC, after a long battle with small cell lung cancer. Dick graduated from the University of Maryland in 1950 and then worked for almost 29 years at the Washington Star in Washington DC.

Joseph Roy Martin Jr., of Roanoke, Va., passed away on Thursday, November 19, 2009, at the Lewis Gale Medical Center in Salem, Va. Roy was born on April 28, 1939, and grew up in Greenville, N.C., graduating from Greenville High School and East Carolina University with a Masters in English.

Alan Bruns, Reporter and Editor, on Oct. 21, 2009

Alan Martin Bruns, 82, a retired reporter and editor died Wednesday, October 21, 2009, at his home in Falls Run, Fredericksburg. He had been in hospice care since mid-September. His death was attributed to congestive heart failure.

Beloved husband of Renee Borden; loving uncle of Belle Ulander and Charles Borden. He was an editor and writer for the Washington Star for 19 years.

ROCKVILLE, Maryland -- Sidney Epstein, who began his almost five-decade journalism career as a copy boy at one Washington paper and rose to editor of The Washington Star, has died. He was 81.

Mary Lou Werner started at the Washington Evening Star in 1944 as a seventeen-year-old copy girl. In 1959, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Virginia school crisis touched off by the state's determination to oppose school integration. "Integration anywhere means destruction everywhere, " Governor J. Linsay Almond, Jr. said in January 1958 in an inaugural speech reported by Werner in the Star.

Charles William “Charlie” Barbour of Reston, a longtime editor and executive in the sports departments of two defunct Washington newspapers, died at Loudoun (Va.) Hospital Center on June 25 after a short illness. He was 89.

Betty Beale, 94, a society writer for four decades whose syndicated column gave readers a close-up, largely sympathetic nibble of Washington's upper crust, died June 7, 2006 at the Washington Home hospice. She had bladder cancer.

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. -- Paul Haney, who was known as the "voice of NASA's Mission Control" for his live televised reports during the early years of the space program, has died of cancer. He was 80.

Thomas Love, 75, a retired reporter and editor with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the old Washington Star, died April 28 at his home in McLean of cancer. Mr. Love came to the Washington area in 1964 to work for a chain of weekly newspapers in Northern Virginia. He later became a columnist and city editor for the Northern Virginia Sun.

Bellows built a career resuscitating underdog newspapers in New York, Washington and Los Angeles. Along the way, he helped turn Tom Wolfe and Jimmy Breslin into stars.
By Elaine Woo, March 6, 2009

James T. Berryman - Pulitzer Prize Winner 1950 - August 1971

Died. James T. Berryman, 69, longtime political cartoonist of the Washington Evening Star; in Venice, Fla. Berryman was working as the paper's sports cartoonist when his father Clifford Berryman, the Star's political cartoonist, fell ill in 1935. James filled in, stayed on to become half of the foremost father-son team in cartoon history.

Robert Menaker, 61; Longtime Washington Journalist - Novermber 8, 2006

He was a news editor at the Miami News from 1967 to 1973 and then moved to Washington to become an editor at the Washington Star. During his two years at the Star, he was a deputy sports editor, an assistant lifestyle editor and editor of the newspaper's weekly arts and entertainment tabloid.

Dick Olson, Star advertising, March 20, 2008

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Richard T. 'Dick' Olson Advertising Salesman

Richard T. "Dick" Olson, 74, a retired newspaper advertising salesman, died March 20 of lung cancer at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda. He was a Chevy Chase resident.

He became publicity manager of WTOP radio, then public relations manager of the old Washington Evening Star newspaper. He led publicity for the Community Chest charity before it became the United Way.

I was so sad to see the notice for Nick Blatchford in today's Washington Post. Here it is:
BLATCHFORD NICK BLATCHFORD May 6,1919 - February 1, 2009 On February 1, 2009, Nick Blatchford of Fairfax, Virginia. He was a noted journalist with the Washington Daily News and Washington Star papers, a lover of people of all walks of life, a hiker of North Woods trails, a fisherman, a husband/father/grandfather/great grandfather, a storyteller.