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

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WACE, BARBARA — a former Associated Press reporter who was one of the few female journalists to cover World War II from the European battlefields, has died. She was 95. Wace died Jan. 16 in London, her family said.

Wace went to France in July 1944, a month after the D-Day landings — a time when news organizations rarely assigned women to war reporting.

In August 1944, she was heading for newly liberated Paris when her editor diverted her to the port of Brest, where a German garrison of 38,000, cornered in the village and hiding in concrete submarine bunkers, was holding off 80,000 American troops.

"I was relieved at Brest just before it was taken. By a man. His name went on the story," she recalled in 1995.

But Wace did have the final word when German forces holding the submarine base surrendered after a 46-day American siege. Wace — who had lost the bedroll containing her clothes — sent a telegram to the AP bureau in London: "Skirt Lost, Brest Fallen."

Wace was born in Gillingham, Kent, in 1907, the daughter of a senior army officer. She worked at the British embassy in prewar Germany and, beginning in 1940, at British missions in Washington, New York and San Francisco.

She returned to Britain in 1942, initially intending to help the war effort by working in a factory. Instead, she became an AP reporter, covering the war from London.

The AP brought in an American female reporter to accompany a Women's Army Corps contingent heading for Normandy a month after the D-Day landings. But when the big night arrived, Wace recalled 50 years later, "She didn't answer her phone. They couldn't tell you ahead. They rang her up to get her and she didn't answer the phone.

"I happened to be in. I went and got my uniform at the quartermaster's at half past 11 at night and I was gone by two in the morning. It was just pure luck. I might have been out, too."

In France, she recalled, "I wrote all the stories I could possibly write about 30 serious girls. And then I managed to escape."

Wace then reported on newly liberated French villages and on Germany in defeat.

Leaving AP after the war, Wace was a freelance writer and photographer until her 80s, traveling the world from Oman to Mongolia.

She is survived by her sister, Daphne.

WALSH, MASON — former publisher of The Arizona Republic and The Phoenix Gazette and father of two AP chiefs of bureau, died Jan. 30, 1999 in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 86.

Walsh was publisher of the two papers from 1978 until his retirement in 1980. Walsh was a reporter, city editor and news editor for the Dallas Dispatch-Journal from 1935 to 1942. He served as editor of the Austin (Texas) Times-Herald in 1942.

Following a stint with North American Aviation in Dallas, Walsh resumed his journalism career in 1945 as city editor of the Dallas Times-Herald. From 1952 to 1960, he was the managing editor. From 1960 to 1966, Walsh was managing editor of The Phoenix Gazette. Walsh was national president of the Associated Press Managing Editors association in 1963.

Survivors include his wife, Anne; sons Tim and Kevin, chief of bureau of the AP in Miami, and a daughter, Peggy Walsh, former AP bureau chief in San Francisco.

WALTERS, JAMES — an editor who worked for the AP in six cities for nearly 40 years, died March 2, 2002 in Phoenix of diabetes-related complications. He was 79.

Walters joined the AP in Columbus, Ohio, in 1947. He later worked on the AP's General Desk in New York and at bureaus in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Washington and Phoenix. He was an assignment editor in Washington during the Watergate scandal and worked on that story for the AP.

Walters retired in 1984 but continued writing a column on gardening for the AP until he reached 50 years with the company. He also wrote for several magazines and newspapers in the Phoenix area and co-authored a widely used gardening industry reference book.

Walters won two national awards for his magazine column writing on gardening, said his son, James B. Walters.

Survivors also include his wife and three daughters.

WALZ, MARTIN G. — a longtime AP photo editor in San Francisco, died April 2, 2001 in Fountain Valley, Calif. He was 86.

Walz worked 38 years as a writer and photographer, covering stories including Marilyn Monroe's suicide, an attempt to assassinate President Ford and the Patty Hearst kidnapping.

After six years at newspapers in Florida and Illinois, Walz joined the AP in 1943 as a photo editor in Chicago. In 1955, he transferred to the AP's bureau in Boise, Idaho, and two years later to the Los Angeles bureau, where he was a writer and photo editor.

In 1969, he moved to San Francisco to become the bureau's photo editor. He worked there for 12 years before retiring in 1981.

Survivors include a daughter and a son.

WARE, MELVIN CALHOUN — joined the AP as a copy boy in Baltimore in 1929 when he was 15 years old. A few years later he was promoted to Teletype operator and in 1944 he transferred to the Dallas bureau. Ware spent 48 years with the AP, taking early retirement in 1977.

He died in Cedar Hill, Texas, March 25, 2002. He was 88. Ware's wife, Louise, died Jan. 29, 2001.

Survivors include one son, three granddaughters and nine great grandchildren.

WARREN, HUELL EARL — an AP newsman for more than 40 years, died Oct. 23, 1999 in Kansas City, Mo. He was 83.

Warren began his career as an AP newsman in 1934. He worked in Buffalo, N.Y., New York City, Baltimore, Washington and Kansas City, where he retired in December 1977.

Survivors include his wife, Margaret, two sons, a daughter and a brother.

WATSON, JIM — retired Senior Editor died Dec. 31, 1995 at age 65.

Watson was a graduate of Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell, S.D. He worked before and after graduation for the Daily Republic newspaper in Mitchell.

After working at a variety of jobs, including selling insurance in San Francisco and writing fiction in Spain, he joined AP in Sioux Falls, S.D., in the late 1960s and later transferred to the Foreign Desk in New York.

WELLS, ROBERT WARREN — retired Charleston, W. Va., bureau chief died March 16, 2001 in a Sonora, Calif., hospital. He was 76.

Wells worked in seven bureaus in the United States and abroad during his AP career. After U.S. Navy service in World War II, he graduated from the University of California in 1947.

He joined AP in 1950 at San Francisco and served as acting Reno correspondent in Nevada in 1954. Later that year he became photo editor in Kansas City.

He moved to the New York photo desk in 1956 and the following year was named Regional Membership Executive for the Carolinas and Tennessee, based in Charlotte, N.C. He became RME for the New York-Connecticut area in 1961, and later that year was named chief of bureau in Charleston.

In 1965, Wells was named photo editor in Frankfurt, Germany, where he remained until taking early retirement in 1974.

Survivors include his wife, a brother, and two granddaughters.

WELLS, TOM — a veteran Associated Press newsman who as bureau chief covered drug wars and political upheaval in Bogota, Colombia, died Oct. 15, 2007. He was 67.

Wells battled lung cancer for years with the same energy and determination he harnessed for news coverage across the Americas, but he lost the fight after the cancer spread to his brain. He died early Monday morning in a Miami hospice, said his son David Wells, 27, who was with him during his last moments.

Wells was known for his fearlessness throughout his 37-year career with the AP.

"It was almost scary. He wanted to get the story done, and it didn't make much difference where you had to go to get it," said former AP Miami Photo editor Phil Sandlin, who worked closely with Wells during the 1980s.

"But he was also very humane. It would really affect him emotionally to see people suffer," said Carlos Gonzalez, AP's night editor in Bogota, who traveled with Wells to danger zones during that time.

Wells' last job was as broadcast editor in Miami, where he worked since 1994. He joined the AP in Charlotte, N.C., in 1970, eventually moving to Mexico City in 1974 and taking the Bogota post a few years later, which he held for 14 years.

In Colombia, Wells covered Pablo Escobar's rise and fall and the terror war he unleashed as he fought extradition. In one week in November 1985, Wells covered two colossal stories. First, the army stormed the Palace of Justice after it was seized by leftist rebels of the M-19 movement who wanted to put then-President Belisario Betancur on trial. More than 100 people were killed, including half the Supreme Court. Then a volcanic eruption sent a wall of mud roaring down a valley, killing about 22,000 people as it buried the entire town of Armero.

"I didn't sleep for 76 hours," Wells recalled in October 2007.

AP Jerusalem Bureau Chief Steven Gutkin, who worked in Bogota as a young reporter, recalled Wells as a tremendous mentor.

"He knew how to write in a folksy style but make those stories about Latin America compelling to people who were from places like he was from in Tulsa, Oklahoma," Gutkin said.

Wells often used unorthodox methods to obtain his stories. Before going abroad for AP, he spent a day picking in the fields to write about farm workers in the South whose bosses refused to pay them.

In the early 1960s, he covered efforts by black Americans to register to vote in the Carolinas, a story that won him a job with the Charlotte Observer. Wells said he took affidavits from those he interviewed on how registration booths opened late and closed early -- fearing they would be pressured later to rescind their statements by local authorities.

For a story on shoplifting, he asked a department store owner to allow him to see how much he could steal in a day, with the promise that the owner would bail him out of jail if he were caught.
"By the end of the day, the table in his boardroom was covered with brassieres and other items I'd managed to shoplift," Wells laughed.

Wells was born in 1940 in Tulsa, Okla., and grew up in Carthage, Mo., where he got his first job at the local paper. He served in the Marines before attending college and returning to journalism.

Wells was an avid fisherman who was looking forward to seeing his youngest daughter, a harpist, play this spring at Carnegie Hall in New York City, his wife said.

As a budding journalist, Wells said if he could write one story that would affect the life of one person for the better, his own life would be worthwhile.

Not long before his death, he amended that view.

"If I could inspire one journalist to write one story that would affect the life of one person, my life will have been worthwhile," he said.

Wells is survived by his third wife Imelda and four children: Kandra, Tom, David and Kelly.

WELSH, CHARLES A. JR. (CHUCK) -- retired AP journalist Charles A. Welsh Jr. died Monday, June 23, 2008 in Edison, N.J. He was 96. Chuck Welsh worked for AP for 36 years.

Read the June 24 AP obituary below.

Ex-AP journalist Charles A. Welsh Jr. dead at 96

EDISON, N.J. (AP) -- Retired journalist Charles A. Welsh Jr., whose 36-year career with The Associated Press took him to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Louisville, Ky., before he joined the news service's main editing desk in New York, has died.

Welsh died Monday at New Jersey Veterans Memorial Home in Menlo Park, Edison. He was 96. He had lived in nearby Metuchen for many years.

"For Chuck Welsh, AP wasn't just a place to work -- it was a belief system," said Louis D. Boccardi, AP's retired chief executive officer. "He had AP in his bloodstream, loved its mission and its people, reveled in telling AP lore going back decades and yet, to the day he retired, he was as enthusiastic and energetic as any young person on the staff."

Boccardi recalled that on his first day at AP in 1967, "I was taken to the main newsroom and turned over to a vet with a big smile and three clattering printers at his elbow -- Chuck Welsh. He was patient with the newcomer and I could tell right away that I was learning from a true believer."

Welsh, a Pennsylvania native began his career at his hometown newspaper, the Daily American of Somerset in 1929, and went to The Johnstown (Pa.) Tribune in 1940, his family told the Home News Tribune of East Brunswick.

Welsh joined the AP in 1942 in Philadelphia, but took leave for military service during World War II in 1944-45.

As a Navy sailor, he served aboard the USS San Francisco in the Pacific Theater and took part in operations in Okinawa, Luzon, Iwo Jima and Leyte, his family said.

He resumed his AP career in Philadelphia, became Pittsburgh correspondent in 1955, and was named bureau chief for Kentucky in 1959.

In 1964, Welsh came to what was then called the general desk at AP headquarters in New York. Before retiring from the world services desk in 1978, Welsh's duties included editing the AP Log, a weekly publication that was sent to member newspapers and broadcasters.

Welsh kept himself busy with church and volunteer work in his later years and was an avid golfer and contract bridge player, said his daughter, Elizabeth Bradley. But retirement didn't come easy for someone who loved his work so much.

"He had a rough time retiring at first," she said. "If he could have worked until he dropped dead, he would have liked that."

Welsh's wife, also named Elizabeth, died in 1994.

WESSEL, JIM -- a former Associated Press national broadcast executive, has died. He was 90.

Wessel, who died Oct. 8, 2005 in Woodbridge, Va., began his 40-year career in broadcast journalism as news editor at WCPO in his hometown of Cincinnati.

After briefly serving as the news director at two AM stations in Buffalo, N.Y., Wessel began a 33-year career with AP Broadcast in New York City in 1940.

During World War II he wrote the daily script "Behind the War News." He later held positions as sports editor, night news supervisor, day editor/supervisor and director of special projects before becoming a national broadcast executive responsible for member relations in the eastern United States. He held that position until he retired in 1978.

Wessel produced the AP's annual audio news review "The World in Sound," narrated by his lifelong friend, Morgan Beatty.

As a reporter, Wessel covered the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination and burial, the first moon landing and all major sporting events of the 1940s. He also supervised AP's first audio coverage of a news event, the Apollo 15 moon landing.

WHEELER, ROMNEY — an Associated Press correspondent during World War II and former network media executive, has died in North Carolina. He was 91.

Wheeler, who died December 28, 2002 at a retirement center in Columbus, worked for the AP for 10 years. He was a war correspondent who also flew in combat with the Air Force in 1945.

After the war, Wheeler served briefly as AP's bureau chief in Amsterdam and then became the news cooperative's chief diplomatic correspondent in London, covering the Paris peace conference of 1946. He later served in Atlanta as AP's Southern regional political editor.

Wheeler left AP in 1948 to administer the postwar book translation program with Allied occupation forces in Japan. He became NBC's London bureau news chief in 1950, staying with the company for eight years, later serving as chief of European operations and president of NBC International Ltd.

Wheeler became international television services director for the U.S. Information Agency in 1958 and joined RCA four years later as a senior media executive. Wheeler was head of public relations for the Michigan utility Consumers Power Co. for 12 years before retiring as a vice president in 1976.

His survivors include two sons, Ian Wheeler of Charleston, South Carolina, and Robin Wheeler of Marietta, Georgia; seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

WHITE, JOHN — an AP correspondent in Olympia for 23 years, died of lung cancer, Oct. 11, 1999 at age 73.

He joined the AP in Boise, Idaho, in 1963 and transferred to the Portland, Ore., bureau in 1967. Later that year, he was named correspondent in Fresno, Calif. He came to Olympia in 1971, and in 1973 he was named correspondent of the Washington state capital bureau. He retired in 1996. A press center near the Capitol that is occupied by the AP and other news organizations bears White's name.

He is survived by his wife, Evelyn, and five children.

WILEY, BONNIE — one of the woman combat correspondents for the AP in the Pacific during World War II, died Sept. 23, 2000 in Honolulu. She was 90.

Wiley covered action on Iwo Jima, the mop-up operations on Okinawa and was the first woman war correspondent to reach Japan, covering the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945.

Wiley was working for the AP in San Francisco in January 1945 when she applied to be a war correspondent and was assigned to the Navy. She received a Navy commendation and battle stars for combat.

Wiley earned a journalism degree in 1948 at the University of Washington and worked for the Yakima Morning Herald in Washington. In 1965 she received a doctorate from Southern Illinois University and joined the University of Hawaii.

In the late 1980s, Wiley went to Beijing to served as an editorial adviser for Xinhua at the New China News Agency. Wiley in 1989 was awarded the UNESCO Award for outstanding contributions to international journalism and education.

WILEY, Hugh J. (Bud) — a retired Associated Press photo editor, died Jan. 6, 2005, in Clearwater, Fla. He was 90.

Retired executive photo editor Hal Buell, who worked with Wylie when AP's headquarters was located at Rockefeller Center, says: "Bud was a remarkable editor and a mainstay of the New York Picture desk for many years. He combined a steady, stable and professional presence with finely honed news instincts and brought a calm to many situations fraught with upheaval in the world of picture journalism he was part of. I do not believe there was a single person who was not fond of Bud. His sense of humor, which took the form of dry wit, was legendary."

Bud and Dorothy Wylie were married for more than six decades. They got involved in civic activism in Florida after he retired from the AP.

The Wylie family provided the following account of Bud Wylie's life.

Hugh Johnstone Wylie III was born in Chicago on Dec. 17, 1914, the second son of Rose and Hugh Wylie. He was soon named Bud or Buddy, he said, much later, because his mother's name was Rose. His stories of life in Chicago include his uncle moving pet geese to safety from the great Chicago fire caused by a milk cow kicking over a lantern.

The family moved to Rockford in Illinois, when Bud was in junior high school and high school, graduating in 1933. He began his newspaper career when he was still in junior high school as a member of the Junior Press Club, sponsored by the Rockford Morning Star. As a reporter he wrote school news, but was also a member of Junior Press Club Players, a musical theater group which actually had a brief stint on the vaudeville circuit, producing, for instance, "Prince Alarming, ... a gorgeously costumed, extravagantly staged musical comedy, written especially for the 40 boys who produce it."

Graduation from high school came during the Great Depression. Bud's dad said he had no money for the University of Missouri's School of Journalism. Bud was determined to go, so he went to work for mostly room and board at an uncle's dairy farm in Wisconsin. One of his many farm stories was about the time he and his cousins delivered milk to Chicago. To powerfully demonstrate how little they were getting for their hard work as well as product, they dumped the milk on the ground. That may have been the beginning of Bud's activism for good causes. That was also about the time Bud's dad decided he could at least partially fund tuition for journalism school. A couple of uncles and an aunt who had a deli and candy store also contributed a bit.

Bud was on the editorial staff of "Missouri ShowMe," a monthly student publication. He was editor of the Missouri Student, published weekly, when Dorothy wandered into the office to volunteer. During his last year and a-half at the university he was a part-time correspondent for the AP, and then was hired fulltime to join AP's state capitol bureau in Jefferson City. Bud and Dorothy were married in 1939.

Hugh Johnstone Wylie IV was born in 1942.

Bud went into the Navy as an ensign in 1943, and served mostly in the Pacific. His aircraft carrier, the USS Sangamon, was kamikazied on May 4, 1945. It limped back, received millions of dollars of repairs and then was scuttled. Bud was given the job of telling the story with words and pictures in a book in 1945. Bud was honorably discharged from the Navy in 1946 and returned to his career with the AP in Kansas City.
Kay Wylie was born in December, 1947. The family joined the Unitarian Church when Kay was 5 years old.

Bud was transferred as photo editor to the New York City bureau of the AP in 1963.

Bud and Dorothy retired in 1975 and moved to Florida to begin an active career of volunteerism. They joined the Unitarian Universalists of Clearwater in 1976.

Bud's special contributions as a volunteer was as newsletter editor, beginning with "The Aging Activist" for the Pasco County Council on Aging, the weekly "Memo" which became the "OctaGram" for the Unitarian Universalists of Clearwater, which he did for 14 years; the Common Cause state and Pasco county newsletters, and a state newsletter for AARP.

He wrote many, many letters to the editor, and was often published in guest columns. His last letter to the editor was used a few months before his death, about three weeks after his 90th birthday. A memorial service was held March 26.

WILSON, JAMES — who covered some of the nation's biggest stories in a 32-year career with The Associated Press, died Sept. 10, 2006, of cancer in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, Ill. He was 68.

Wilson became Chicago bureau chief in 1985 and remained in that post until his retirement in 2000.

"Jim was a hard-driving newsman who not only had a wonderful AP career of his own but also trained another generation to follow him," said Tom Brettingen, the AP's senior vice president of Global Newspaper Markets, who worked under Wilson when he joined the AP in Sioux Falls, S.D., in 1970.

Wilson joined the AP in 1967 in Bismarck, N.D. He was named correspondent in charge of the Pierre, S.D., office in 1969, and news editor in Minneapolis in 1970. From his base in Minneapolis, he directed coverage of the flood in Rapid City, S.D., that killed 238 people in 1972 and the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, S.D., by members of the American Indian Movement in 1973.

He also attracted the notice of his co-workers, including former Chicago Tribune managing editor F. Richard Ciccone, who worked at the AP with Wilson in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

"He was a great newsman," said Ciccone. "He was a very fierce competitor."

That was apparent, Ciccone said, during the Wounded Knee occupation. Wilson ignored an FBI blockade and sneaked into the village in the middle of the night to cover the story from inside.

He did whatever it took to make sure his story was accurate, as illustrated by Wilson's reaction to his editors' telling him that there was a discrepancy between how many people the AP and UPI were reporting had been killed in the Rapid City flood, Ciccone said.

"Wilson goes to the (temporary) morgue and he counts every single body bag and, as it turns out, the AP was right," Ciccone said.

As news editor in Boston from 1974 to 1976, he directed coverage of the conflict over desegregation of Boston public schools. He then became Detroit's bureau chief in 1976, and took the same post in Seattle in 1982.

He took over the Chicago bureau when his predecessor, the late Thomas J. Dygard, left to become chief of bureau in Tokyo.

His career in journalism began in 1955 when, as a Dakota Wesleyan University freshman, he took a job at the Mitchell (S.D.) Daily Republic answering phones and writing brief sports items.

He had planned to become a teacher, but after interrupting his study for military service, he began taking journalism more seriously when he returned to college in 1958, said his wife, Ruth Wilson.

"It got into his blood," she said. "He worked hard and he found it very fulfilling."

He also eventually returned to the Daily Republic, where he worked his way up to sports editor.

WILSON, ROBERT C. — who parachuted out of a burning plane behind enemy lines during World War II as an AP war correspondent, died Jan. 4, 2000 in Washington, D.C. He was 83.

Wilson spent 41 years as a journalist, including 13 years with the AP and 23 years as a reporter and editor for U.S. News & World Report.

Wilson had volunteered to cover air operations over Germany when the troop carrier plane he was aboard was shot down in March 1945. He parachuted from the plane and sought refuge with British troops in a farmhouse, which later came under German attack. Wilson's first-person account of his escape was featured in newspapers across the country. He retired in 1978.

Survivors include his wife, Huguette Vallier, and his son, Stephen, who is AP's London-based European sports editor.