|
Obituaries: S SAMPEY, WILLIAM J. — spent 21 years as an editor in AP's Boston bureau until a heart problem led to a medical disability in 1971. He died March 2, 2002 in Palm Bay, Fla. after a brief illness and two weeks after celebrating his 90th birthday. Sampey had made his home with a daughter, Christina M. Sampey, in Melbourne, Fla. Although living in Florida in retirement, he retained ties with family and friends in the Boston area. He and his late wife, Rosanna Manley Sampey, reared their six children in Braintree, Mass. His wife died in 1983. Sampey was a writer/reporter for the old Yankee News Network in New England during radio's golden years of the 1930s and '40s. He took a job on the network staff after graduating from Boston College and 15 years later became an AP staffer in Boston. Survivors in addition to Christina, include three other daughters, Sami R. Whitman of Braintree, Valerie L. Zanani of Melbourne and Marianne G. Shaughnessy of Pembroke, Mass.; two sons, John M. Sampey of Boston and William C. Sampey of Weymouth, Mass.; 12 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren. SADOWSKI, BERNARD — retired supervising technician for the Cranbury Technical Center, died June 30, 2000 at his New Jersey home. He was 69. "Bernie," as he was called, retired from the AP in June 1999 following 49 years of service in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. He joined the AP in 1950 in Philadelphia as an office boy and rose through the technical ranks there to a Wire photo operator position. He transferred to New York City in 1956 as a technician trainee at the 10th Avenue shop. He later advanced to maintenance supervisor for all departments at AP's New York headquarters. He transferred to New Jersey in 1972 when the production department moved to East Brunswick. The operation later moved to Cranbury. Sadowski is survived by his wife, Virginia and two daughters, Ginger and Vicki. |
||||||||
 |
Survivors include her daughters, Linda Perry, Laurie Stuckey and Deborah Morse; son, Kenny Stuckey; and nine grandchildren.
Shanke, who had been hospitalized since mid-October, died Wednesday of a long illness, his wife, Flory Shanke, told the AP on Thursday. A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Shanke had lived in Stockholm since retiring in the early 1970s as chief of AP's Scandinavian Services. The posting was his last assignment in a long career spent as a war correspondent and bureau chief with the international news cooperative. He started with the AP in Milwaukee in the late 1930s, but was assigned to Berlin in 1937 "because AP found out I spoke a little German," he said in an interview in July 2003. When war broke out in 1939, Shanke followed the invading German army into Poland and France. One of his stories told how the Germans broke through France's Maginot Line with hardly a pause in their advance. Shanke also reported on the Nazi annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland in then-Czechoslovakia. When the United States entered the war in December 1941, "all the correspondents were rounded up, prevented from working," Shanke said in the interview. The U.S. journalists were interned, then released in May 1942 in an exchange for German reporters who had been interned in the United States. The exchange occurred in Lisbon, Portugal, and he was flown to London where he worked briefly as a night editor in the AP London bureau. In 1942, he was posted to Stockholm to open a bureau. While there, he met his future wife, Flory, who had fled from her native Finland during the 1939 Russian invasion of Finland. The two were married for 62 years. They had no children. Because Sweden was officially neutral, several reporters used its capital as a base, including Shanke, who covered Nazi-occupied Norway and Denmark, and made frequent trips to neighboring Finland to cover the Finnish-Russian war. After World War II ended, he returned to Berlin to participate in the coverage of war-wrecked Germany, where he helped cover the Nuremberg trials. He went back to London in 1948 and covered several major news events, including the 1956 attack by France, Britain and Israel against Egypt when it seized the Suez Canal. Shanke, the dean of AP's foreign correspondents, in 1967 returned to Stockholm that year and was named chief of Scandinavian Services.
A graduate of Marquette University in Wisconsin, he worked briefly at a Milwaukee radio station and the Beaver Dam Daily Citizen before he joined the AP.
Scales retired from the AP in 1992. He joined the AP in Charlotte, N.C., in the early 1950s. He later transferred to New York, where he worked in the Markets Department. He returned to Charlotte in the 1960s, and transferred to Miami in 1969. In 1972 he made the transition from automatic operator to technician. Scales is survived by his wife, daughter and two sons. SCHROEDER, EUGENE — an AP newsman for more than 40 years who covered the civil rights upheaval in the 1950s and 1960s, died May 5, 1999 in New York City. He was 77. Before joining the AP in Detroit in 1958, the Seattle native was a correspondent with International News Service, a forerunner of UPI, on roving assignments that included the civil rights movement in the South. During the furor over school integration in Little Rock in 1954, he was calling in a story to his Chicago desk when some "rednecks," as he called them, tried to tip over the phone booth. The incident was described by AP reporter Relman Morin, who later won a Pulitzer Prize. Schroeder liked to say, "I won a Pulitzer — for Pat Morin." A graduate of the University of Washington and Northwestern University, Schroeder was AP's Lansing correspondent in the early 1960s. He later was a member of an AP task force on racial issues. He joined the AP Newsfeatures staff in New York in 1978. |
||||||||
|
As the Post's ombudsman from 1974 to 1979, Seib wrote a weekly syndicated column of media criticism and monitored the newspaper for fairness, accuracy and balance. Seib previously worked for The Evening Chronicle in Allentown, Pa., The Associated Press, the Philadelphia Record, International News Service and Gannett News Service. He joined the Star in 1954 and was named managing editor in 1968. After retiring from the Post, Seib taught at Harvard, Northwestern, Syracuse and the University of Maryland. Survivors include his wife, son and daughter. |
||||||||
|
His son, Eric, of Tampa, Fla., said his father, who had quadruple bypass surgery about 15 years ago, had been in failing health. Shaffer made news while in retirement when he and his dog, Sam, were lost for nearly six weeks in 1984 in the Atlantic on his sailboat, Sham Rock, which he built. Shaffer and Sam, a German shepherd-black Labrador mix, survived on rice and fish. Waves snapped the boat's mast as he headed for Beaufort, N.C., from his home port in Jacksonville, Fla., Shaffer told the Coast Guard. After the mast broke, his direction was dictated by the Gulf Stream. He ended up near Nantucket, Mass.; the Coast Guard had given up on a search for him. He later explained: "If you go to sea you better be ready. If there is anything not quite right with your boat the sea will find it. I learned that the hard way." Shaffer began working for AP in Columbus in 1953 and transferred to Cleveland in 1956. He accepted an assignment as Ohio AP's reporter in Washington in 1981 and retired in 1983. Shaffer was born in Lakewood and attended classes at Ohio Wesleyan, Ohio State and Northwestern universities. Before he could complete his studies, he joined the Navy in 1941 and served through World War II. He lived in Japan for several years after the war. Besides his son, survivors include his wife and a daughter. |
||||||||
|
"Jack was an excellent newsman. His knowledge of New York City politics was invaluable, as was his friendship. He will be sorely missed," said Sam Boyle, the AP's New York bureau chief. Shanahan, a past president of the New York Press Club, spent 35 years working for The Associated Press. Before retiring in the fall of 1998, he served as chief political writer, news editor, City Hall correspondent and day book editor, among other positions in the AP's New York bureau.He was head of the club's Freedom of the Press Committee, which provides assistance and support to journalists. "Jack was a champion of the First Amendment, fighting for reporters' rights and access in the rough-and-tumble world of New York politics and municipal affairs," said Chris Olert, a colleague at the AP and the Inner Circle. Dan Andrews, who covered City Hall for United Press International from 1986 to 1989, called Shanahan "my guiding light. He did it all. He covered the mayor, the City Council, and every news conference on the steps of City Hall. "No one was not important to Jack," said Andrews, now press secretary to Queens Borough President Helen Marshall. "He'd listen to whomever approached him, take his pad out of his back pocket and start writing. He was a great newsman, husband, father — a terrific gentleman. And he had guts." A retired Marine lieutenant colonel proficient at judo, Shanahan frequently played a Marine — including Oliver North — at the Inner Circle's annual show spoofing New York politics. Shanahan remained active in the Marine Corps Reserve, as well as the Marine Corps League and the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation. A graduate of Fordham University, Shanahan worked for the now defunct Long Island Star Journal. He was a longtime member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a fraternal Roman Catholic group that operates the St. Patrick's Day Parade. During retirement, Shanahan worked part-time for The Tablet, a newspaper of the Brooklyn Roman Catholic Diocese. In addition to his wife, Shanahan is survived by five daughters, three sons and 14 grandchildren. |
||||||||
|
SHARP, EDSON (Ed) — retired Chief of Communications for Georgia and Alabama, died May 20, 2000 at his home in Yatesville, Ga. He was 77. Sharp retired from the AP as Atlanta COC in 1988, following 42 years of service in Arkansas, California, the District of Columbia, New York and Georgia. The Colorado-born Sharp served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in China during World War II. He began his AP career in Little Rock in 1946 and transferred to San Francisco in 1948. He returned to Little Rock in 1950 as a Teletype operator, moved to Washington in 1951 and again returned to Little Rock in 1953. He reported to New York Communications in 1955 as an engineer where he taught Photofax operation and maintenance. In 1957, he was named to the Traffic Bureau Chief's position in Atlanta and later became COC. Sharp is survived by one daughter, Dea Williams, and two sons, Mike Sharp and Rusty Sharp, all of whom live in the Atlanta area. His wife of many years, the former Mollie Knox, died in 1995. Sharp's brother-in-law is retired Arkansas COC Bill Knox. Sharp's son-in-law is Atlanta COC Ronnie Williams. Little Rock technician Craig Knox is Sharp's nephew. The late Virginia technician Bob Knox was Sharp's brother-in-law.
After he retired, Sharpley received a masters degree in social work at Indiana University/Purdue University in Indianapolis. He was an avid golfer, a member of American Legion and the White River Yacht Club. The family suggests memorial gifts to the American Cancer Society. Survivors include his fiancé, Joyce Carringer Turner; one daughter, Karen Thompson; three sons, David, Philip and William, and seven grandchildren. |
||||||||
|
Shinn died Oct. 7, 2002 in Los Angeles, and his wife Sally died a week later, according to family members. Both had been in failing health for the past several years. Born Shinn Wha-bong in 1918, during Japan's occupation of what is now North Korea, Shinn studied law at Tokyo's Chuo University, managing to avoid being drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Later, while studying political science and international law at the University of Nebraska in Hastings, Neb., he read the works of famed muckraker Lincoln Stefffens and, by his own account, was inspired to become a journalist. In 1949, Shinn bought a used 1929 Model A Ford for $196, toured the United States and then took the car back to Korea, where he used it while covering stories for the AP's Seoul bureau. When North Korean forces invaded South Korea across the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950, triggering the bloody three-year conflict, Shinn was taken prisoner, but saved himself from probable execution by claiming he had stolen the car from the U.S. embassy, pointing to its old Nebraska license plates as proof. On Sept. 15, 1950, as Gen. Douglas McArthur launched his bold invasion of Inchon to outflank the North Koreans and turn the tide of war, Shinn circumvented a U.S.-imposed news blackout by reporting the story from South Korean sources, scoring one of the war's biggest news scoops. Shinn's family had been caught behind enemy lines in the initial chaos of the war, but as United Nations forces recaptured Seoul, he was reunited with his 1-year-old son, Johnny, and his wife, Sally, who was pregnant with their second child. He also found the 1929 Ford, still drivable. After the war, Shinn worked as a hotel manager in Seoul and financial consultant. He later lived in Tokyo where he ran a Korean news service and was a leading figure in the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, serving as its president in 1976-77. Shinn was the author of two books on the Korean War,
most recently ``The Forgotten War Remembered, Korea: 1950-1953,'' published
in 1996. He dedicated the book to his parents, whose fate in North Korea
he never knew. |
||||||||
|
During his 16 years at the AP, he covered beats ranging from sports to Congress to politics before going to the White House. Shoemaker began his career in Ocean City, N.J., where he was born in 1920. He worked at The Courier-News in Plainfield and the Evening Journal in Vineland. After serving in the Army during World War II, he spent a year at Everybody's Poultry Magazine Publishing Co. in Hanover, Pa., before joining the AP in 1947 as a correspondent in the Annapolis, Md., bureau. He also worked in Baltimore before moving to Washington. Shoemaker left reporting in 1963 to become assistant to the president of the Motion Picture Association of America. He left that post to work for the Commerce Department and in 1966 was called to the White House to become an assistant for public correspondence to President Johnson. Later, he returned to the White House as a public affairs deputy in the Office of Management and Budget during the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. Survivors include his wife and a daughter. SHUMAKER, JAMES H. — who was the inspiration for the popular comic strip "Shoe," died of cancer Dec. 19, 2000 in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 77. Shumaker had taught at the University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 1973. He also spent more than 50 years in print journalism. Shumaker began his career as a reporter for the Durham Herald. He later worked for the AP before returning to the Herald, where he became state editor and managing editor. From 1959 to 1973, he was editor of the Chapel Hill Weekly, where he struck up a friendship with then-Carolina art student Jeff MacNelly. MacNelly later became a cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune, and based P. Martin Shoemaker, the cranky, cigar-chomping boss of the Treetops Tattler in "Shoe," on his former boss. MacNelly died earlier this year. Shumaker also was editorial page editor of The Wilmington Star News and wrote a weekly column for The Charlotte Observer for more than 20 years. An anthology of the columns, entitled "Shu," was published in 1989. Survivors include his wife and nine children. SEAGO (Jr.), LESTER W. (LES) — a former AP correspondent who filed the bulletin on the death of Elvis Presley, died March 1, 2000 in Bartlett, Tenn. He was 61. As a reporter for The Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock in the 1960s, Seago reported on the civil rights movement, including the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis. Seago worked for the AP from 1972 to 1987, covering politics and state government in Nashville and then serving as AP's correspondent in Memphis. In 1977, he confirmed the death of Presley and wrote about the entertainer's funeral. Seago also worked on military newspapers in Korea, Arkansas and Mississippi, and for The Chattanooga Times in Tennessee. He was a public relations specialist with the University of Memphis at the time of his death. Survivors include a son and a daughter. |
||||||||
|
SILHA, OTTO A. — a former member of the AP board of directors, died Sept. 11, 1999 of a heart attack in Minneapolis. He was 80. Silha, a Chicago native, began his career in 1940 as a copy editor at the former Minneapolis Star. He spent 40 years with the Minneapolis Star and Tribune and Cowles Media Co., leaving for four years during World War II when he served in Air Force intelligence. He later became chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Cowles Media, the former owner of the Star Tribune, as the newspaper where he was publisher and president is now called. Silha was a member of the AP board of directors from 1978 to 1984, when he retired from publishing. His alma mater, the University of Minnesota, announced in 1984 it would establish the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law within the university's School of Journalism and Mass Communications. Silha gave about $500,000 to set up the center. He contributed $1 million this year. He also contributed $1 million to establish a professorship in media ethics and law. Survivors include his wife, Helen; sons Stephen and Mark Silha; a daughter, Alice Reimann; and three grandchildren.
Smith died at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Boston. He was 86. Smith, who marketed the AP's television and radio services for 35 years, built the AP's New England broadcast membership from 20 stations to more than 250 when he retired in 1982. Smith was well-known in broadcast circles for his encyclopedic knowledge of the industry, and remembered for a keen intellect and a raucous laugh. Smith's son, James F. Smith Jr., is foreign editor of The Boston Globe and was an AP staff member for 12 years. The elder Smith began his career in journalism after high school as a reporter for the Worcester Evening Post, then became the Milford correspondent for the Worcester Gazette until he joined the Navy in World War II, seeing duty at the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific. After his discharge from the Navy, he joined the AP's Boston bureau as a radio news writer. In March 1958, Smith became regional membership executive for New England. Retired special correspondent George Esper, the AP's former New England regional writer, remembered Smith as a "dear friend" and a sharp salesexecutive who won broadcast clients with a combination of dedication and wit. "He was so charming, and so beloved by the members," Esper said. "He was an awfully decent, nice person." Smith contracted Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a potentially debilitating nerve disorder, but overcame it and went on to counsel others with the illness. Smith was born in Milford, Mass., and lived the last 50 years of his life in Newton. His wife, Joanne C. Smith, died in 1999. He is survived by two other sons, Paul J. Smith and David C. Smith, who run a Waltham-based family concrete company; his brother, Charles J. Smith of Framingham, and sister, Joan T. Smith of Milford; and six grandchildren. |
||||||||
|
SMITH, TRUMAN STANLEY — who rose to chief of Communications in Baltimore during a 39-year career with AP, died of colon cancer Oct. 19, 2000 in North Fort Meyers, Fla. He was 90. Smith, known as Stan, joined the AP in Baltimore in 1934. Born in New Windsor, Md., in 1910, Smith graduated from New Windsor High School, worked for AT&T in Baltimore for three years, attended Bliss Electrical School in Washington, D.C., and spent a year at the University of Maryland School of Engineering before joining the AP. He held a variety of positions on the technical staff including maintenance man, mechanic and Wirephoto operator before being appointed Traffic Bureau Chief — the name given to COCs in those days — in 1953. Smith took early retirement in 1973 for medical reasons. In 1991, Smith and his wife, Doris, moved to Florida, to be close to Doris' sister, Celeste Graf, retired AP Baltimore administrative assistant. He is survived by his wife and two grandchildren. SOUSA, JOHN PHILLIP — a former AP newsman in California, died June 30, 2000 in San Diego. He was 65. A native of Rosario, Argentina, Sousa became an American citizen in his late teens. At some point after his arrival, he changed his last name to Sousa from Guerrico for unknown reasons. Sousa worked for the AP in Sacramento, San Diego and Los Angeles and helped to cover the murder of actress Sharon Tate by Charles Manson and fellow cult members in 1969. In 1971, he became a reporter for The San Diego Union and was named travel editor two years later. He left the paper in 1992 after its merger with the Tribune. Sousa, using the stage name Phil Marco, had a number of small parts in ``Some Like it Hot'' in 1959 with Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis and "The Buccaneer" with Yul Brynner and Charlton Heston. Sousa also had a role in the yet-to-be released television movie "Running Mates" starring Tom Selleck and Faye Dunaway. He is survived by a sister and a brother. CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) --
Charles Lee Stafford, a journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for an investigative
series about the Church of Scientology, has died. He was 83.
STARR, JOHN ROBERT — a former AP bureau chief in Little Rock, died April 1, 2000 in Del Norte, Colo. He was 72. After 19 years with the AP, including 10 as Little Rock bureau chief, Starr was hired to lead the Arkansas Democrat, then an afternoon paper preparing for a head-to-head battle with the dominant Arkansas Gazette. Starr was managing editor of the Democrat from 1978 to 1991. When the Democrat purchased the Gazette's assets, Starr became managing editor of the Democrat-Gazette. After the newspaper war, Starr remained as managing editor of the Democrat-Gazette for less than a year but continued writing a column seven days a week until the late 1990s, when he cut back to three columns a week. Starr was a sports writer at the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., before joining the AP in Little Rock in 1957. He was promoted to AP bureau chief in 1966 after serving for years as capitol reporter and news editor. During his AP tenure, Starr was one of the prime movers behind the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, considered a model sunshine law at the time. Survivors include his wife, a daughter and two sons. Son Robert is publisher of the Palatka (Fla.) Daily News. |
||||||||
|
Stephens became editor of the AP's new special assignment team in Washington in 1968 and led a team of 10 reporters that uncovered some of the first disclosures of military procurement scandals during the Vietnam War. The team was awarded the Worth Bingham Prize for Distinguished Reporting. Stephens who had previously worked at the AP bureaus in Little Rock, Ark., and Kansas City, Mo., and at the New York headquarters was promoted to assistant bureau chief in Washington, where he oversaw the AP's Watergate reporting. He left the AP in 1975 to become the Washington bureau chief and White House Correspondent for Booth Newspapers, a group of eight Michigan papers. Stephens later become editor of one of those, the Flint Journal. Stephens moved to Wyoming in 1984 and took over as editor of the weekly Jackson Hole Guide. He returned to Washington as press secretary for Rep. Sandy Levin, D-Mich. Stephens later became managing editor of the AARP Bulletin before retiring in 1991. Survivors include his wife, Jean Heller, a son and a daughter. STRACENER, WILLIAM — a former AP correspondent in Springfield, Ill., died Monday, Jan. 21, 2008 in Bluffton, S.C. He was 63. Here's the obit that moved in the Jan. 22 "Deaths" fixture on the AP wire: William Stracener
Stroup spent much of his AP career photographing Detroit Tigers and Detroit Lions ball games with assorted side trips to help cover political and civil rights events. Stroup became part of the news himself when he was struck by a brick while taking pictures at a Detroit race riot in the 1970s. A picture of him holding the brick, showing his bandaged and bruised face, appeared in a book that AP published as part of its sesquicentennial in 1998. Stroup retired in 1985, two years before his wife, Judy, passed away. Pres, as he was known among colleagues, later moved to Florida where he lived in a health care facility in Clearwater. He had suffered with Alzheimer's disease. "We visited him last May 22," said a step-daughter, Ann Nicaise of Sterling Heights, MI. "We gave him a Tigers baseball hat, and I understand he had that hat on when he passed away." Pres’ remains were cremated and buried next to his wife in Detroit on July 3. There was no service. Other survivors include another step-daughter, Lynn Ardyth Finazzo of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. SUTPHIN, MARTY — a retired supervising editor on the New York General Desk who helped coordinate coverage from the Cuban missile crisis through the Clinton years, died of cancer Aug. 17, 2000. He was 69.
SWENSON,
BART — the Associated Press regional television executive
for the Midwest and a former TV news producer and director, died June
29, 2006. He was 43. Swenson died at his home in Mahtomedi, Minn., after
a 19-month battle with colon cancer. |
||||||||
|
|