Wick Temple, an AP vice president whose four-decade long career ranged from newsgathering to leading the AP's sports, news, personnel and newspaper membership departments touched many people in his long and remarkable career. Following his death, many of his friends and colleagues had memories to share.

Elton R. Wright

I wanted to express my great sorrow on learning of the death of Wick Temple. Wick and I both worked alongside John Platero, in the Helena, Montana, AP bureau over thirty years ago. I was an Automatic Operator there until technology overtook my job in late 1971, when I left Helena, then worked for several months in Denver, Colorado. In June of 1972, I left AP to return to Montana, where I am still living.

Wick was always a real gentleman. I love the outdoors life, and invited Wick several times to go hunting or fishing with me, but his first love was his job as bureau chief and I never could talk him into going out hunting or fishing. Recently, when I was attempting to locate John Platero , I was able to contact Wick at The AP by email, and he was instrumental in locating John. Even though I had not seen Wick for many years, we had maintained contact by email this past year and he will be missed by me.

Myron Belkind

In 1984, Wick Temple came to London as managing editor to deliver the eulogy at a memorial service for European Sports Editor Geoffrey Miller, who had suffered a heart attack during the Sarajevo Olympics. Wick, who as sports editor had worked closely with Geoffrey for many years, stood in front of the altar of St. Bride's Church on London's Fleet Street and in his soft-spoken manner.delivered a beautiful tribute to Geoffrey, recalling his long service to the AP, his pioneering efforts to build up its European sports coverage and his devotion to his family. No one could have delivered a better eulogy than Wick did that day.

Charles A. Price Jr.

I had the pleasure of working with Wick Temple for about five years when he was Chief of Bureau in Seattle, before and during the introduction of the computer age. Wick became a friend as well as a colleague. I learned to respect him for his honesty and integrity in his daily dealings with members and his staff. He was a man who you could turn to when a problem seemed insurmountable. I shall miss his warmth and countenance.

Bob Haring

Al Dopking, a kitchen table and a case of beer changed Wick Temple's life. Wick and I started in Little Rock together. For many months, Wick and I shared the night editor's job, one of us doing it four nights, the other three, until I moved to days as state editor. Every couple of months Wick and I would trade off, working 14 days straight, then getting four days off in a row. It worked well.

When I was leaving Little Rock to become Tulsa correspondent, Al Dopking offered Temple the state editor's job. Wick told me he was going to turn it down. He said he just wanted to be a sports writer, not a supervisor. I invited him to stop by my house on his way home that night to talk about it. He did and we did – at my kitchen table with a case of beer. About dawn, he agreed to tell Dopking he would be state editor. The rest, as they say, is history. Wick, of course, did a great job as state editor.

Bob Greene

I was the youngest staffer in Kansas City and assigned to the overnight broadcast desk when a big fire broke out in St. Louis, where Wick Temple was the correspondent. I made numerous calls and had the story wrapped up on the Aye wire by the time Temple arrived in the bureau. He wrote a marvelous letter to our COB with copies to NY, etc. In 1974, I arrived in NY Sports where I finally worked for Wick and found him to be as delightful in person as he was in our long-range conversations.

Kent Zimmerman

When I arrived in St. Louis as correspondent in 1971, Wick Temple had left his mark – big footprints and lots of stories about how to run an AP bureau. It was several more years before I met him face-to-face. But he was always generous with help and advice to the new kid on the block – as he continued to be in his roles in New York. Wick combined his remarkable abilities with compassion. And he will be missed by everyone who knew him and worked with him.

Bob Johnson

I met Wick so long ago that his fellow bureau chiefs kidded him because they thought his $8.00 haircut was exorbitantly expensive. When I was being promoted to managing editor, Wes Gallagher, Keith Fuller and I met to discuss possible successors as general sports editor. We decided it had to be Wick. I flew out to Seattle to give him the good news. He met me at the airport and drove to the best hotel in town. I checked in and we met in a classy booth in the classy hotel's classy bar.

After we took about two sips of our drinks, two other patrons started a loud argument, fell off their bar stools and rolled around on the floor, goofily grappling and yelling. Wick said: "This is our special welcome to Seattle for visitors from New York." Wick didn't think the good news that we wanted him to be sports editor was all that good. He loved Seattle. He loved the Northwest. He loved the Washington members. He loved the Washington AP staff. But I did succeed in persuading him that his future was in New York.

There we had a lot more great experiences – hard work, some frustrations and many laughs. After he announced that he was retiring, I wrote to him, reminding him of all this. He replied just before Christmas, thanking me for the memories and promising that he and Margy would stop in Albuquerque on their way to Seattle. He thanked me for talking him into taking the job as sports editor. Everybody in The AP should be thankful that he took that job and thankful for all the others in which he excelled.

Tim Klass

Besides his administrative skills, Wick was a writer who could have held his own on the Poets Corner, and he was capable of blinding speed on a breaking story. The day the Kellogg mine disaster broke in 1972, with more than 90 silver miners trapped underground by a fire in northern Idaho, I arrived to take the night desk in Seattle and found we were in dire need of a lead.

I took the latest material from the Spokane bureau, banged out an urgent and handed it to the operator to punch into tape and transmit. Wick took one look at and said, "Timothy, this is a great lead – and it's the last one you're going to write on this trick. You're running the desk. I'm writing the story." For the rest of the night he sat in the bureau chief's office, notes spread around him in a 180-degree semicircle, whipping out copy that was nearly letter-perfect at 60-plus words a minute on a manual typewriter. All I had to do was restore the wayward comma or period that was dropped because the keys couldn't keep up with Wick's fingers.

Years later, when he was sports editor, he did a three-take interview with the trainer of Secretariat the night before the Belmont, which Secretariat won to complete the Triple Crown. That story is still one of my favorite pieces of sports writing. He was the best writing teacher I ever had. Whenever I go to write a lead, I remember what he taught me: "Lead with the lead." Sounds simple. It is. Why complicate matters? That was how he thought, at least when it came to copy, and that's how he taught.

David Minthorn

Wick Temple was unflappable at the helm of major news events. He had an uncanny instinct for scoring beats and steely nerves when occasions required. He was a great AP manager and newsman, a wonderful and caring colleague. He'll always be an inspiration.

Jack Martin

Wick and I were both very young reporters when we worked in the Little Rock bureau during the very tense school integration era of 1959-60. But we held our own and did the bureau proud one Sunday night when some wild-eyed anti-integration types started throwing bombs around the city, including one at the school board offices.

I was manning the bureau alone and working the phones frantically when Wick happened to drop by on his night off. I asked him to jump in as my field reporter and he didn't hesitate an instant. Between us, we rounded up enough details for a clean-up lead and got it on the A wire in less than a half hour! We completely blanked UPI.

Through everything, he always had that winning smile and personable manner that made him well liked by everyone.

So long, Wick, you were a great newsman.

Kevin Costelloe

Wick was a wonderful colleague and friend, and a great person to work with. Whenever I was in New York, I liked to drop by Wick's office to swap a few tales and talk shop. I always came away knowing a lot more than I did when I started. I'll miss him greatly.

Eric Morrison

I was in New York at The AP the last day Wick was in the office and by happenstance was the last to see him as he left Rockefeller Center. Even while heading off to prepare for his operation, he was thinking of someone else and saying to me, "You all right, need anything, got a ride?" He was an AP man bred in the bone.

Paul Freeman

Wick Temple brought new meaning to the phrase "nice guy." He was sufficiently talented in many areas to justify arrogance, but he had none. He gave me a key piece of advice when I became COB in Helena, one of Wick's earlier positions. "Don't live within sight of the bureau," Wick said. He had lived in a nice home in the next block from the AP bureau in Helena. If the nightside person got into a bind, he would call Wick for help if he saw a light burning in the Temple temple.

Wick was also somewhat famed in Helena as a fire hazard. He loved to smoke his pipe and staffers learned to check trash receptables for smoldering tobacco. No one minded putting out Wick's smallish fires, because he was always willing to do whatever was necessary to help us put out larger ones.

Debra Hale-Shelton

In the late 1980s, when I was night supervisor in the Chicago bureau, I was striving to become a news editor. I had applied for a few jobs, only to find out someone else was chosen each time. I was quite discouraged when one day I got a call from Wick. No, he said, I did not get the job that I had wanted. But he assured me that my day was coming. In that one brief phone call, Wick gave me the encouragement and assurance needed for me to keep trying to do my best and to keep striving for something better. Wick was already near the top of his career at that time, but he was always personable and never too busy or too important to talk one-on-one with the people who put out the AP's daily news report. He will be greatly missed.

Joseph McGowan

It was always comforting calling 50 Rock from the field and talking to Wick because he never got excited and was able to bring calm to what might be a tough situation. Sometimes I would pose whatever was on my mind on the phone and then there would be silence until I wondered if we had been disconnected. But about then, he would come back with a well thought out commentary on the situation.

Rosanna Robustelli

Wick was truly concerned about the AP. He called in on vacation days, because he cared about what was going on. He cared about the people in the Membership department on a personal level and made us feel like a family. He was generous and wanted us to take time out once in a while to have a good time. We celebrated each of our birthdays. We gave baby showers and bridal showers for people in the department, and he was very active in picking out gifts. He always complimented me on my work and made me feel good about myself.

Brad Kalbfeld

I've known Wick since he was sports editor, a next-door neighbor to the Broadcast news desk back when we were at 50 Rock. He was always a calm but funny presence – someone to share a joke or a good story with, and who always seemed to take in the tumultuous world of AP with a bit of a chuckle. I remember when he took that style down the hall to the General Desk, and how easy it was to work with him. I was a rookie manager, and he was someone I could go to to get advice on how to navigate my way through what was, back then, a bewildering AP maze. He was very kind to me.

But what I remember most is how he transformed Personnel into Human Resources. He modernized it, made it less bureaucratic and more ... well, human. Time was, I dreaded a call from HR. That changed once Wick remade the place. It's something we take for granted today – but it happened because of the kind of person Wick was.

Bruce Hodgman

Wick Temple helped me make the transition back to newspaper writing. In 1982 I made the switch to the General Desk, as AP Broadcast was moving to Washington, and I chose to stay at headquarters in New York. Wick welcomed me to the General Desk, where in a few years I became "PMs Supervisor", the job I remember the beloved Ed Dennehy holding when I was in Radio many years before. Little did I know that from those days with Wick at the General Desk I would become a "General Desk fixture" of sorts until I retired just two years ago. As with everything he did, when Wick did something he did it exceedingly well, and what he did lasted. All he accomplished those many years I knew him at "50 Rock" is proof of that!

Kent Sturgis

I served with Wick in the Seattle bureau in the early 1970s. He was one of the best newsman I'd ever seen and, boy, did he love to jump into the middle of a big story. His enthusiasm and competitive spirit was infectious. He had a smooth, fluid writing style that we admired. The best lead I ever had Wick wrote over my byline.

Douglas A. Kienitz

Back in the spring of 1967, I was sports editor of the paper in Idaho Falls, Idaho. At the urging of a fellow staffer and U of Montana journalism school grad who suggested that I consider a wire service, I drove to Helena, Montana one weekend and met COB Temple at his house. We lunched, played pool and had an enjoyable visit.

A couple months later, I got a call from Burl Osborne, then in the Denver AP bureau, to see whether I was interested in joining the AP in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I said yes. The rest is history. About five years ago, I chatted with Wick when he was visiting the Dallas bureau. As usual, he was Wick. Most gracious and a great AP individual. He was the epitome of The AP – both from a member perspective and fellow staffer.

Related Stories:
AP vice president for membership dies at age 65
Memorial Service — Audio and slideshows included.
Photos of Wick Temple