Cleartime: C Obits

Obituaries:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

CANELAS, JORGE — one of Bolivia's top journalists and a former editor and Colombia bureau chief for The Associated Press, died of cancer July 12, 2006 in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba. He was 73.

A native of the Bolivian capital of La Paz, Canelas launched his journalistic career as a translator for the AP in Santiago, Chile, and later worked as an editor in New York on the news agency's Latin America desk.

He was AP's bureau chief in Bogota, Colombia, from 1969 to 1977 and subsequently founded and ran some of Bolivia's most influential newspapers.

In the late 1980s, Canelas became publisher of the Bolivian daily Ultima Hora. The following decade, after he had become a widely read columnist, Canelas was named publisher of La Razon and then La Prensa, the Bolivian capital's two major newspapers.

In the late 1990s, Canelas founded the weekly magazine Pulso. He was awarded Bolivia's most distinguished journalism prize in 2002.

CANESCO, GEORGE — one of the Philippines' most popular song writers and composers, died Nov. 19, 2004 of complications from liver and lung cancer, his family said. He was 70.

Canseco won numerous awards for many of the more than 160 songs he wrote in a career spanning more three decades, starting when he was still working as a newsman for The Associated Press in Manila in the late 1960s.

Former first lady Imelda Marcos commissioned Canseco to compose the song "Ako ay Pilipino" (I am a Filipino), a hymn that paid tribute to the nation.

"Every now and then he would compose a song in his typewriter and I thought he was just rewriting a story for the wire," said former AP Manila photo editor Marcelino Roxas.

Canseco also worked as cinema music director, and many of his ballads became theme songs for Philippine movies, winning him awards for best musical score. He also wrote songs made popular by many of the Philippines' top singers.

One award for the country's best composers has been named after him.

Canseco also served as a councillor of suburban Quezon city and headed the Filipino Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

Survivors include three daughters.

CAPPON, RENE J. (JACK) — Rene J. Cappon, longtime editor for The Associated Press and the word master behind some of its best writers, has died. He was 83.

The Viennese-born Cappon, known to colleagues as Jack, died Sunday, Dec. 9, 2007, in a nursing home in Port Washington, N.Y., said his wife, Susan. He died of what was believed to be natural causes.

Over a half-century at the AP, Cappon held a variety of jobs: editor and reporter in Baltimore and Kansas City, Mo.; editor of AP NewsFeatures; writing coach; and general news editor when that was the top editorial position for the news cooperative. He retired in 2002.

At AP NewsFeatures, he presided over a group of writers that came to be known as the Poets' Corner, including Pulitzer Prize winners Saul Pett and Hal Boyle, and Jules Loh, Sid Moody, Hugh Mulligan and others.

In 1989, he stepped down as NewsFeatures editor to conduct a companywide campaign on writing and editing for the AP news staff. He also held coaching sessions for many newspapers. In his classes, as in his book, he stressed the use of concrete facts rather than flowery adjectives.

He was born Rene Jacques Cappon in Vienna on July 2, 1924, and grew up speaking German and Hungarian. He studied English, Greek and Latin as a Viennese schoolboy and later as a high school student in New York.

CAREY, FRANK E. — retired AP science writer, died Nov. 5, 1999 in Alexandria, VA. He was 90.

Carey joined the AP in 1940. He wrote about science, medicine and space during his 34-year AP career. He was a Nieman Fellow in 1947 at Harvard University where he studied astronomy and physics.

Survivors include three daughters.

CARLTON, JOHN "TEX"— Former Associated Press art director John "Tex" Carlton, whose illustrations brought to life events from the Lindbergh kidnapping trial in 1932 to John Glenn's trip into orbit three decades later,died August 28, 2003 in Greenwood, SC. He was 96.

Carlton died Wednesday in the rural town of Greenwood after he became ill, his daughter-in-law Donna Carlton said.

"He was always at his art table every day making pictures," she said. "At the age of 96, he was pretty remarkable. He still had it."

Carlton's sketches, including portraits of World War II Gen. George Patton, Cuban leader Fidel Castro and U.S. President John F. Kennedy, appeared in newspapers and on televisions around the world.

He began at AP in 1932 and stayed for 38 years, creating illustrations when a picture wasn't available to go with a story.

"You couldn't always have people pose for a portrait, so you often had to draw from what you'd seen or from a photograph," Carlton told the Greenwood Index-Journal for a story in December 2001.

His daughter-in-law said he was an avid golfer and had played rounds with Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and golfer Jack Nicklaus, with whom he continued to correspond.

Many of his sketches were in pencil or charcoal. Most are monochromatic, but some, such as Chinese political and military leaders and American astronauts, are in color.

Carlton was an inspiration to generations of AP staffers, not only for his talent but for his enthusiasm and continued interest in the company and its younger staff, AP spokeswoman Kelly Smith Tunney said.

"He kept in touch with old friends and made new friends easily, often sending them charming, often hilarious, colored pictures on birthdays and holidays," she said. "He never stopped drawing and caring about other people."

The Rev. Nena Reynolds, minister of the United Methodist Church in Hodges that Carlton attended, said he plastered the church's walls with Carlton's drawings and watercolors, which often arrived as greeting cards.

"It was always a little artwork he would mail you," he said.

Carlton's daughter-in-law said his age had slowed him in the past year and he had lost some feeling in his fingers, "but he'd still be able to come up with all these beautiful pictures."

Born in Stamps, Ark., Carlton had lived in Sarasota, Fla., since 1971. He moved to Hodges about five years ago to live with his son and daughter-in-law.

Carlton's wife, Frances Marian Blake Carlton, died in 1973. He is survived by his daughter, Janet C. Fulton; his two sons, John Carlton Jr. and Ken Carlton; and seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

CINTRON, MANUEL (Manny) JR. — a teletype operator on AP's race desk in the Sports department, died of cancer Sept. 22, 1996, in New York. He was 62.

Manny joined the AP in July 1960 as an operator in Communications and moved to Sports in 1991. He had been on disability since May of 1995.

Manny's son, Gary, is a technician for the AP in Miami. His wife, Anne worked as AP's head receptionist at New York headquarters.

CLABBY, WILLIAM R. —a journalist who spent 43 years as a reporter, editor and executive at The Wall Street Journal and had been managing editor of AP-Dow Jones, died Dec. 2, 1997, of complications from Parkinson's disease. He was 66.

Bill retired from Dow Jones & Co., publishers of The Wall Street Journal, in 1996. At the time of his retirement he was vice president of Dow Jones' Financial Information Services Group and an executive vice president of Dow Jones Telerate.

Bill's career began with a copyreader's job in the Journal's Chicago bureau in 1953. He later became a news editor and reporter in Chicago, assistant managing editor of the newspaper's Southwest edition in Dallas, a member of the paper's Page One editing staff and New York bureau chief. In 1971, he was named managing editor of the AP-Dow Jones News Service, a joint venture of Dow Jones and The Associated Press. He remained as Dow Jones' senior executive at the joint venture until his retirement.

"Bill Clabby was a superb editor, and an inspiring leader for the AP-Dow Jones editorial staff,'' said AP President Lou Boccardi. "He played a leading role in the development and growth of AP-Dow Jones.'' Bill graduated from the University of Iowa in 1953.

He is survived by his wife, Joann, three sons, seven daughters and 23 grandchildren.

CLARK, EDWARD GEORGE — a retired AP reporter and editor, died Sept. 15, 1998 of a heart attack while traveling on a ferry between Saltaire and Bay Shore, N.Y. He was 74.

Clark joined the AP in Madison, Wis., shortly after graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1948. He worked in Milwaukee and Chicago before moving to New York where he was an editor on the national desk and covered City Hall. He retired in 1985. Clark lived in Green Valley, Ariz., and Saltaire, N.Y.

Survivors include a brother.

CLARK, LOUIS STANLEY — Few people who worked with Lou Clark in The Associated Press over the years thought of him simply as a technician.

“He had the demeanor and mien of a bank president,” said Charles Bruce, who as chief of communications in Miami was Clark’s boss for many years.

“He probably was one of the top 4 or 5 technical guys around the AP,” said Otis Herring, former AP communications chief in Tennessee.

Louis Stanley Clark, 76, died Feb. 9, 2007, in Florida at his home in Naples. A native of Jefferson County, Ky., he was buried at St. James Cemetery in Elizabethtown, Ky.

He had retired from the AP in the mid 1990s after more than 40 years of service. Much of his time was spent in Florida, first at Tallahassee, then at Miami, with an interval at the AP Technical Center in St. Louis.

When AP moved the center to New Jersey in the 1970s, Clark opted to return to Florida. He likely could have taken a management job but preferred developing ideas and working with equipment.

"He was so much more than a communications specialist," said Ralph Keibler, retired AP technical communications manager at Kansas City. "I knew Lou for 43 years and worked with him in Miami in 1964."

“Lou was a technician par excellence and a self-taught design engineer,” said Bruce. “He loved to make black boxes that would do something for AP.

“I worked with Lou at Miami from 1970 until his retirement in the 1990s,” Bruce added. “He began his career either in Louisville and Indianapolis in the late 1940s as a copy boy and wirephoto operator.

He studied electronics and TV repair in those days. He became a technician and bid on the assignment in Tallahassee around 1960. He came to Miami as a technician in 1964 and was promoted to the St. Louis Tech Center as a technical service manager in 1968.

Herring recalled that Clark also had an interest in protecting the rights of the staff while being fair to the company. “He served on the old United Telegraph Workers union board and the company's top echelon respected Lou during negotiations,” Herring said. “They knew he was fair and would not take advantage or lean to one side.”

Clark is survived by his wife, one son, two daughters, two stepsons, a stepdaughter, one brother and two sisters. He also had 13 grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.

(obituary written by former Cleartime Editor Joe McKnight)

CONRAD, LUD — senior technician in the New Orleans bureau of The Associated Press, died Nov. 29, 2004, after a short illness. He was 56.

Members of his family said he fell ill at his home in the New Orleans suburb of Lacombe after undergoing medical tests for cancer for the past month. He was taken to the Veterans Administration Hospital in New Orleans where he died the next night.

Conrad, who joined the AP in New Orleans in 1992, also worked in the Helena, Mont., bureau before returning to Louisiana.

Until he fell ill earlier this month, he was a frequent visitor to newspaper and radio stations throughout Louisiana and Mississippi where he dealt with AP satellites and computers.

"Lud was an integral part of the technical operation," said Howard Gros, regional director of AP Technology Services. "He was well respected by his peers and the staff, and we will miss his contributions, as well as his friendly, outgoing personality. He had a way of working with people, and he definitely will be missed."

Born George Ludvig Conrad on Feb. 13, 1948, in Green Bay, Wis., he served in the Navy from 1970 to 1976. After his discharge, he worked in Wisconsin until moving to Louisiana where, among other jobs, he designed and installed electronic equipment on offshore oil rigs. He also worked for the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway commission for nine years and supervised installation of the "hands off" toll system and collision avoidance radar.

After beginning his AP career in New Orleans, Conrad transferred to Helena, Mont., where he worked from 1995 to 1999, and then returned to Louisiana, where he was based first in Alexandria and then again in New Orleans.

COOK, LEWIS C. (WES) — longtime AP overnight supervisor in Kansas City, died Aug. 26, 1999 in North Kansas City, MO. He was 70.

Cook joined the AP in Kansas City in October 1953 and spent much of his AP career on the overnight shift, compiling the state news report for afternoon newspapers along with early morning broadcast reports for radio and television stations in Missouri and Kansas. In addition to his supervisory assignment, Cook wrote extensively about Harry S. Truman after the former president's return to Independence, MO. One of his final stories before he retired on Dec. 31, 1997, was a retrospective on Truman's up-and-down year as president 50 years earlier.

Cook was active in Masonic organizations. He was grand master of Missouri's 110,000 Free Masons in 1975-76 and potentate of the Ararat Shrine Temple in Kansas City in 1992.

Survivors include his wife, two daughters and a son.

CORRAL, JOSEPH — who spent ten years with The Associated Press on the New Jersey technical staff, died May 28, 2005, at his Hazlett, N.J., residence. He was 69.

"Joe was at home when he passed away after a relatively short illness," said his wife of 23 years, Carole M. Corral. "He was retired at the time of his death, but his ten years with the Associated Press was a very happy and rewarding time. He enjoyed his work and the relationship he had with his co-workers and staff," she said.

Corral was a hardware support specialist at the Cranbury Technical Center in New Jersey when he retired from the AP in 2003. He was first hired by the AP as a production manager in 1993 when the New Jersey technical center was located in East Brunswick. He became a project manager later in 1993 and then hardware support specialist in 1996.

Prior to working at the AP, Corral was employed by several electronics companies, including Bell Systems, AVL and Syntrex, his family said.

A New York City native, Corral was born on Dec. 7, 1935, the son of the late Jose Corral Sanchez and Maria Adosinda de Corral of La Coruna, Spain.

Other survivors besides Carole include his sons Joseph Corral III, Mark Corral, and Steven Jabobson, Marc Jacobson and Daniel Jacobson, and daughters Janet Corral and Karen Cappiello, and 14 grandchildren.

CRAIG, CAROLYN — a former AP personnel executive, died June 26, 1999 of cancer, at age 52, in London, England.

Following the 1985 kidnapping in Beirut of AP Middle East Correspondent Terry Anderson, Craig was the AP's liaison with his family in Beirut, New York and Japan. For seven years she played that behind-the-scenes role and traveled to Germany with Anderson's sister, Peggy Say, to welcome him back from captivity.

A few years after joining the AP at New York headquarters in 1978, Craig, then known as Wellward and later Turolla, moved to AP's Personnel Department. As a personnel executive in what is now called Human Resources, she took part in labor talks, set up orientation and training programs and coordinated the transfers of hundreds of staffers. During her dozen years in Human Resources, she interviewed hundreds of job applicants and hosted scores of staffers who visited headquarters.

Craig is survived by her husband, a sister, five stepchildren, two nieces and a nephew.

CREPEAU, FRANK — a veteran foreign correspondent for The Associated Press who mixed a warm and winning wit with tenacious reporting as he covered the declining Soviet bloc and war-torn Middle East, died in New York on Oct. 11, 2006, following a stroke, his family said. He was 74.

Among other stories in a four-decade career that took him from covering Wisconsin sports to reporting on high-stakes diplomacy, Crepeau scored the first interview in exile with Russian author Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn and filed the electrifying bulletin reporting Anwar Sadat's peace pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

He retired in 2001 as assistant international editor, a job in which his sympathetic ear and wise counsel helped a generation of AP journalists in conflict zones and hard-pressed bureaus around the world. "He took the time to get to know us and keep us motivated," recalled London correspondent Tom Wagner.

"We knew Frank for his insights on events in so many parts of the world and also for his kindness and sense of humor," said Tom Kent, AP deputy managing editor. "Frank always had a fresh idea for a story, a new perspective and he was just a really nice person."

Crepeau served as bureau chief in Moscow during the rise of the Soviet dissident movement, and as head of AP's office in Israel as the Camp David process brought the promise of peace. But it was while based in Germany on his first foreign assignment that he got an early taste of Cold War politics.

In January 1969, five months after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Crepeau rushed to Prague to cover the funeral of Jan Palach, a student who set himself afire in Wenceslas Square to protest the occupation of his country. But Czech authorities rounded him up along with 12 other Western correspondents and expelled them, confiscating Crepeau's notes and film in the process.

"A modest, quiet-spoken man, he nevertheless is tenacious on assignment," his first foreign bureau chief, Richard O'Malley, wrote at the time.

Based in Moscow in 1971-76, Crepeau landed a big exclusive in 1974 with the Solzhenitsyn interview in Switzerland, a week after the Soviet government had stripped the Nobel Prize author of his citizenship and expelled him.

"Frank, what are you doing here?" Solzhenitsyn asked as he spotted the skinny, balding American standing away from a horde of reporters dogging the celebrated exile on Zurich's cobblestone streets. The AP correspondent had interviewed Solzhenitsyn a year earlier in Moscow after the writer was refused a permit to live in Moscow with his family.

In a second exclusive interview, the "Gulag Archipelago" author told Crepeau he would continue writing in exile and had as much right to live on Russian soil as those who had "the audacity to physically throw me out."

Assigned to Israel in 1976, Crepeau was there a year later when Egyptian President Sadat, in a dramatic peace overture, made the first official visit by an Arab leader to the Jewish state.

When the Egyptian's motorcade reached Jerusalem, Crepeau filed a bulletin capturing the historic moment with simplicity: "JERUSALEM (AP) - President Anwar Sadat of Egypt came to Jerusalem Saturday night."

Francis X. Crepeau was born Aug. 7, 1932, in Seattle. He served two years in the Air Force in the early 1950s, including duty in Japan, and was a graduate of Montana State University.

He joined the AP in Madison, Wis., in 1960. In 1964, he transferred to the Boston bureau, and he joined the Foreign Desk in New York two years later. He was assigned to Germany in 1968.

Crepeau was named assistant international editor in New York in 1980. A disabling stroke in 1998 led to his later retirement.

He is survived by his widow, Anne, and a son, Alexandre, both of New York, and two grandchildren, Natasha and Nicolas.

CRIDER, BILL — Bill Crider, who covered hurricanes, riots, politics and other great Southern stories for The Associated Press, died in New Orleans, Nov. 9 after a long illness. He was 83.

Crider, who had been living in retirement in Sky Valley, Ga., returned to New Orleans earlier this year when his health failed. He died at Canon Hospice in suburban New Orleans.

Idolized by fellow reporters as one of the best writers ever to work for the AP, Crider was asked at his retirement the secret of how he did it. Startled, as if he had never really thought about it before, he said, "Why, I just try to make it jump off the page."

A turning point in his career came in 1962 when he was hit in the back with a shotgun blast during the riots over integration at the University of Mississippi. He carried a buckshot pellet near his spine for the rest of his life.

As his reward for surviving, he said he claimed from the AP a new suit of clothes and a transfer to New Orleans from the Memphis bureau, where he had worked 14 years.

Crider started in the news business in 1947 after six years of landlocked duty with the Navy.

Born William Calvin Crider Jr. in Rome, Ga., he left home during the Depression. He had no college education, but he lied about it in his interview at the Chattanooga (Tenn.) News-Free Press.

His editor discovered the lie and told Crider: "But you don't have any experience."

Crider said he replied, "No, and I'm not going to get any, either, unless you hire me."

He got the job, and to augment his pay, he worked as a stringer for International News Service, where he caught the attention of Ron Autry, the AP correspondent, with a series of beats on important stories. Autry hired him six months later and took him to Memphis to work for the AP there.

After the Mississippi riots, he became a member of the AP civil rights team, covering the struggles of desegregation across the South. He was shot at — "ball bearings, jagged chain, and cherry bombs" — at Grenada, Miss., dodged the Ku Klux Klan at Bogalusa, La., and covered integration in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

He covered the deaths of three civil rights workers at Philadelphia, Miss., the murder of Medgar Evers in Jackson, the trial of Byron de la Beckwith — the man accused of killing Evers — and the appeals of H. Rap Brown.

When he was not on the scene, he was writing the copy called in from the front lines. He said he was writing three stories of national caliber each day and enjoyed every minute of it. "I just thought that was the way it would always be."

When the riots eased off, there was Hurricane Camille, among other storms and floods. He covered New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's accusations about the Kennedy assassination, then Garrison's own trial in 1972 and '73.

Before his retirement in 1985, his reporting became a history of Louisiana: the 1973 New Orleans sniper, Edwin Edwards' campaigns for governor, Edwards' first criminal trial, the deaths of 78 people in the Luling ferry collision, mafia boss Carlos Marcello and the Brilab trial, visits by Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. At the end of his career, he covered the 1984 World's Fair.

With his string tie and notebook, Crider was recognized by news sources over the state. But a poetic touch marked his copy whether the subject was the Mafia, fire ants, Pete Fountain's half-fast Mardi Gras, musicians in Preservation Hall, or "a gently fading bayou beauty with skin as white as magnolia blossoms."

His talent was to reach down to the heart of a story and tell it with clarity and breathtaking originality. His prodigious gifts earned him offers from some of America's leading newspapers, but he always resisted uprooting his family and described his loyalty to the arcane ways of the AP with, "Hell, I don't know how to do anything else."

One of his unsung accomplishments was to keep a mouse, captured at the AP office, as a pet in a gerbil cage for more than a year. He fed "The Brute" oyster sandwiches and chuckled as the critter ran like mad on an exercise wheel, not getting anywhere — a perfect metaphor for the news business, Crider said.

After retirement, Crider hauled off to Singapore to head a writing team at The New Paper, a tabloid launched to impose an American idiom in the staid English newspaper tradition there. He was supposed to teach local reporters how to be street-wise, snappy and earthy. Crider called it the easiest job he ever had, and stayed until the experiment failed two years later.

Survivors include his wife Sammie, sons Chris Crider of Slidell and Sam Crider of New Orleans; daughters Candy Crider of San Francisco, Sherry Palermo of New Orleans, and Merry Crider of Covington; step-daughters Brenda Stroud and Faye Duggan, both of Memphis; one brother, Herschael Schroeder of Chattanooga, Tenn., and one sister Georgia Carr of Rossville, Ga.

CROST, LYNN — a World War II correspondent whose book, "Honor By Fire," told the story of the role of Japanese-American soldiers on the Pacific war front, died April 7, 1997. She was 80.

Lyn was an AP reporter in Washington, D.C., when the Honolulu Star-Bulletin hired her to cover second-generation Japanese-Americans, or Nisei, in a military unit that became, for its size, the most decorated in American history. Lyn published "Honor By Fire" in 1994 to counter anti-Japanese bias in the United States fanned by trade disputes between the countries. "The story must be told," she wrote in the preface. "Americans do not know how hard these men fought in a war to keep democracy alive."

Lyn joined the AP after stints at the Star-Bulletin and the Honolulu Advertiser. After the war, she became the Star-Bulletin's Washington correspondent. She was a White House special assistant during the Eisenhower administration. Her career is recalled in a display about the Nisei at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. It shows her trench coat, typewriter and war uniform.

CRUZ, ANGELINA — a client relations specialist in AP Digital, died Nov. 27, 2001 after a long illness. She was 32.

The New York City native first worked for the AP in 1994 as a temporary staffer at New York headquarters. Cruz, known as "Angie," was a sales and order administrator in Communications and a customer service administrator in Information Services prior to joining the staff in AP Digital in January 1998. After graduation from New York's Cathedral High School, she was a bookkeeper at Food Emporium and a legal secretary in the city's Human Resources Administration before joining the AP.

Several fund-raising benefits to help Cruz and her family take care of medical-related costs in the last year were held by AP staff and friends in New York.

CUNNINGHAM, BEN — an ex-AP newsman and a journalism instructor who shaped the careers of many reporters and championed media rights, died May 1, 2001 in Seal Beach, CA. He was 73.

Cunningham taught at Long Beach City College and California State University, Long Beach. He was called as an expert witness in several cases involving the First Amendment and the press, including the Carol Burnett libel suit against the National Enquirer. Cunningham worked for UPI, AP, the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner before he became an educator. He retired in 1991.

Survivors include his wife, two sons and a sister.

CURRIER, CHET — whose stock market and investing stories were fixtures in newspapers across the U.S. during a 29-year career at The Associated Press, died Sunday, July 29, 2007. He was 62.

Currier, who also worked for Bloomberg News, died of prostate cancer at a hospice in Santa Monica, Calif., his son Craig said Monday.

A prolific writer, Currier for years reported the Wall Street story as it developed throughout the trading day, also turning out three weekly columns on the markets and personal finance: Weekly Wall Street, Ticker Talk and On The Money. He later launched two columns on mutual fund investing for the AP.

He also turned a passion for crossword puzzles into a side career, creating more than 1,000 Sunday-size puzzles for the AP over the course of 20 years.

Currier viewed the stock market realistically -- over the long term, it was likely to go up, but along the way it most certainly was going to suffer plenty of pullbacks, consolidations and shifts from bull to bear and back again.

His writing was clear and concise, two critcal elements in explaining the complexities of a stock market to millons of readers who were more likely to get their financial news from their local newspapers than the The Wall Street Journal.

Currier reported about mutual funds before the average investor knew much about them. "I saw my job really as, first of all, kind of educating people that they didn't have to keep their money in a bank savings account any longer. They had new choices," he said during a 2005 interview that was part of an AP oral history project.

"Chet had a talent and instinct for bringing to life investing and managing money. He took ideas and themes that other people made complicated and explained them simply, but not simplistically," said Michael Millican, a former AP business editor, now president of Robert Marston Corporate Communications.

"Chet Currier defined the Wall Street beat for The Associated Press at a time when millions of average Americans were becoming stock and mutual fund owners," said Jim Kennedy, AP vice president and director of strategic planning. "He literally opened the territory for the general news audience."

Kennedy, who directed the AP's business news staff in the late 1980s and early '90s, said Currier's finest moment may have been his daily coverage of the stock market crash of October 1987. "He was able to put an unprecedented event into perspective almost immediately," Kennedy recalled.

Currier covered the stock market almost daily from 1974 until 1992, then became a full-time columnist. If a triple-digit swing in the Dow Jones industrials unnerved him, he didn't show it in the newsroom.

"He was wise and calm, able to write rapidly and incisively, and had a deep understanding of markets," said Floyd Norris, an AP business writer from 1979 to 1981 and now chief financial correspondent at The New York Times. "I remember watching in admiration and awe as he covered the silver market crisis brought on by the Hunt brothers in 1980."

On Oct. 13, 1989, the day of what became known as the Friday the 13th mini-crash, when the Dow Jones industrials plunged a then-unnerving 190 points and revived fears of another collapse like the October 1987 debacle, Currier showed his ability to write a story that was straightforward and that also put a big Wall Street move into context:

"NEW YORK (AP) -- The biggest selloff since the crash of 1987 rocked the stock market Friday, driving prices into a free-fall decline following news that a big buyout deal for UAL Corp. had fallen through.

"The sudden slide came almost exactly two years after a similar Friday-afternoon rout that preceded Black Monday on Oct. 19, 1987.

"But many Wall Streeters insisted it was far too soon to declare that another collapse was in the making."

Indeed, there wasn't another collapse ahead.

Currier didn't climb on bandwagons, didn't try to time the market and believed that being a long-term diversified investor was the smartest course. Norris said that while Currier didn't try to forecast the markets, "he was better at it than those who were in that business."

In 1999, he received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

At Bloomberg, which Currier joined in 1999, he wrote columns twice a week on Wall Street, bonds, mutual funds and investing. His last article was published June 29, according to Jim Greiff, columns editor for Bloomberg.

"It was classic Chet, clear, concise and insightful," Greiff said.
Currier was fascinating to watch at his craft, tending to write in spurts. He would sit quietly, deep in thought, or go outside for a break; he'd then turn back to his computer and begin pounding away furiously at the keyboard, not stopping until he was done. Norris recalled that when he was working on a crossword puzzle, the rest of the staff would occasionally hear an odd question from Currier's corner such as, "Who had the first name Norma?"
Sometimes irascible, he had strong opinions that he wasn't afraid to voice. But he also had a sense of humor that had him making pithy, acerbic and sometimes earthy assessments of people in their daily lives, all the while flashing a big smile across his broad face.

He was also patient when needed, teaching and encouraging younger staffers as they wrote their first stock market stories.
A man of eclectic tastes, he was well-read on a range of topics, loved to talk about the music he listened to growing up in the 1950s and '60s and about sports. He thoroughly enjoyed betting on horses no matter how well he fared, and told a co-worker, "the only thing better than a losing day at the track is a winning day at the track."

Chester S. Currier was born in New York in 1945, and lived most of his life in Connecticut before moving to Southern California more than a year ago. He received his bachelor's degree from Amherst College, served in the U.S. Navy and did a stint at Fairchild Communications before joining the AP in Kansas City in 1970. Two years later, he moved to the cooperative's world headquarters in New York as a business writer and became its full-time Wall Street writer in 1974.

"At that time, the Dow was sagging under 600, mutual funds were thought to be an endangered species, and the AP was just beginning to broaden its coverage of investing and personal finance," Currier once wrote.

Currier also wrote several books, among them "The Investor's Encyclopedia," "The 15-Minute Investor," "Careers in the '80s" and "Careers in the '90s."

Besides his son, he is survived by his wife Carol and his daughter Dana.

CURRY, BRACK — an AP reporter and editor for 45 years, died May 3, 2000 in Arlington, VA. He was 81.

Curry had worked as an international affairs editor in the Washington bureau for 17 years before his retirement in 1985. He began his journalism career in Dallas in 1941. Later, he worked in AP bureaus in New York, London, Berlin and Bonn. He also served as chief of AP's Scandinavian services, in charge of coverage for Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. Curry covered a wide range of foreign policy, defense and political issues while in Washington. He received plaudits from editors around the world for his skilled chronicling of U.S. news for AP's international subscribers.

Curry is survived by his wife.

CUSHING, RICHARD — Cushing, 87, an Associated Press war correspondent in Asia during World War II and later the head of Voice of America, died July 23, 2004 in Mill Valley, Calif.

Cushing worked for the AP in San Francisco for 15 years. He was sent to the Pacific in the final year of World War II as a correspondent in the Philippines and Japan.

He and two other correspondents were the first Americans to enter Tokyo when the war ended, according to his son, Lincoln. Cushing covered the Japanese surrender to Gen. Douglas MacArthur on the deck of the battleship Missouri and then flew to Shanghai, where he reopened the AP bureau.

Cushing was the acting director of the Voice of America in 1968-69 and served as a foreign service officer in Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and Kenya.

CUTHFORTH, THURUM (Paul) — a technical employee for more than 47 years, died Dec. 23, 1996, at a nursing home in Bigfork, Mont. He was 85.

Paul spent most of his AP career as an automatic operator, punching news copy on a Teletype. He also maintained equipment during some of his assignments. Paul began working for the AP in August 1928 in Denver and spent his entire career working for the company, except for service during World War II. Paul retired from the AP in March 1976 in Seattle. He also worked for the AP in Portland, Ore., and Helena, Mont.

He is survived by his wife, Jessie, of Bigfork, a daughter, Mary Wheeler, of Bigfork, and his brother, Charles, of Denver.