During Chandlers first year as publisher, the paper ran one of the most important series in its history, stories that helped define the new Los Angeles Times. Constance Chandler 1896-1962. Chandler was never a meddler or an intruder. But Thomas said it really didnt take much persuasion, because he really did want to go., Chandler himself said: I think some of the family members and some of the corporate people were hoping I would step aside although I dont recall that there was strong pressure.. To put together his galaxy of star reporters, Otis Chandler employed what in much of the newspaper business amounts to a secret weapon money.. Despite the enormous difference in their socioeconomic status, the two remained close friends for more than 30 years. Otis . He was initially miserable; the other students all seemed richer, better-educated and more sophisticated. That article deeply wounded some of the 160-odd descendants of Otis grandfather, family patriarch Harry Chandler. Son of Norman Chandler and Dorothy Buffum Chandler login . Otis Chandler in MyHeritage family trees (Sturtevant Web Site) view all 15 Immediate Family Diana Chandler mother Asa Chandler, Jr. father Cynthia Bailey sister Emily (Chandler) Washburn sister Diana Chandler sister Noah Chandler, I brother Lucinda Chandler sister Laura Chandler sister Martin Chandler brother David Chandler brother George Chandler When doctors said Otis was dead, Mrs. Chandler wailed, My son is not dead! She picked him up and raced to another hospital, screaming all the way there, Otis is alive, Otis is alive!. Heirs to other great newspaper dynasties have felt an obligation to remain deeply involved with their papers, virtually until their dying day, and Chandlers decision not to do so remained a topic of curiosity among his peers long after he left. He had married his college sweetheart, Marilyn Brant having proposed to her on his 23rd birthday on the seventh hole of the Pebble Beach golf course and they had a baby boy (Norman, after Otis father) but no plans and no substantial income. There were so many changes going on, and I think if we hadnt kept up with the flow, The Times wouldnt have continued to do well financially Im glad we did what we did.. By his own count, Chandler had at least half a dozen brushes with death over the years, and that didnt include his bout with prostate cancer in 1989 or his mild heart attack in 1998. Chandler was growing weary, worn down by the rigors of work and the burdens of responsibility, dispirited by GeoTek and his failing marriage, getting by mostly on nervous energy, with big circles under my eyes, he later said. Williams was 21 years older than Chandler and often pulled in his reins. Chandler re-entered the public eye in 1999 when he publicly criticized the LA Times for creating a special issue of its Sunday magazine dedicated to the new Staples Center in downtown LA when the paper shared a financial interest in the property. He accused Willes and Downing of misusing and abusing the newsroom staff, of unbelievably stupid and unprofessional handling of the Staples special section and of perpetrating a scandal and a fiasco that posed the most serious single threat to the future survival and growth of this great newspaper during my more than 50 years of being associated with The Times., This was, he said, probably the single most devastating period in the history of this great newspaper. He withdrew from Dartmouth and moved to Los Angeles for his health. It was at Watkins Glen that Chandler got to know Bettina Whitaker, who was an executive at Shakeys International, a sponsor of his Watkins Glen car. In 1977, Chandler brought Tom Johnson, publisher of the Dallas Times-Herald and a former aide to President Johnson (no relation), to Los Angeles as president of The Times and heir apparent for publisher. Arthur O. Sulzberger, who was then publisher of the New York Times, said that although he initially shared his colleagues surprise and disappointment when Chandler left, I later realized that I shouldnt have been so surprised. In 1960, he became publisher of the Los Angeles Times. When the guide missed his shot and ran off in a panic, Chandler shot the elephant in the leg at a distance of 10 yards, deflecting the animal just enough to send it thundering past them. But former Editor Thomas, who joined the paper two years after Otis became publisher, said that although Chandler was basically a C-plus student his focus and tenacity made him an A-plus as a publisher or almost anything else he really put his mind to., (Jesus, Bill, Chandler told Thomas when he learned what the editor had said. His most serious accident came in 1990, when a musk ox trampled him in the Northwest Territories of Canada and he had to be airlifted to a hospital. In October 1999, The Times published a special issue of its Sunday magazine devoted entirely to Staples Center, the sports arena and entertainment venue then about to open in downtown Los Angeles. Theyll have to carry me out of here feet first, he said. Norman Chandler, then near his 60th birthday, saw the logic in the change. In one of their biggest coups, they brought in Robert J. Donovan, the Washington Bureau chief of the New York Herald-Tribune and one of the most respected journalists in the country, to be chief of the expanded Times bureau in the capital. When he was with you, he was really with you, Harry said. Many had led quietly productive lives outside the newspaper industry and had tried to keep their complaints about cousin Otis and The Times within the family circle. Otis Chandler was born on July 24, 1924. There was widespread speculation after he gave up his corporate titles that he had been gently nudged aside by long-disgruntled family members. If a newspaper, even a great newspaper like the Los Angeles Times, loses credibility with its community, with its readers, with its advertisers, with its shareholders, that is probably the most serious circumstance that I can possibly envision. [1][2], After graduation, Chandler tried to enroll in an Air Force training program, but was turned down because he was too large to fit in the cockpit of a jet. Perelman once wrote that while traveling through the western United States by train, he asked a porter to bring him a newspaper and unfortunately, the poor man, hard of hearing, brought me the Los Angeles Times.. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position. A tribute will be held at The Times at a later date for Times staff, as well as retirees from the paper and the Times Mirror Corp. The outdoors is my second home, my chapel, my retreat, my great love in life.. Otis and Williams perhaps the ablest newspaper editor of his generation, in Halberstams words became a formidable team. Column: 15 minutes of fame flies by. Periodically, Chandler rented the now-defunct Riverside Raceway for a day so he, Thomas and their friends could race their cars. After the papers decision to endorse Nixon for reelection as president in 1972 caused a newsroom firestorm, The Times announced in 1973 that it would no longer routinely endorse candidates for president, governor or U.S. senator. Well before Chandler was named publisher, a poll of Washington correspondents conducted by writer Leo Rosten named The Times one of the three least fair and reliable newspapers in the country. He was rejected anyway; his shoulders and hips were still too big to fit into the cockpit of a jet. Also, the name of Otis Chandlers first wife was incorrectly given as Marilyn Brandt. [1], In 1998, at age 71, Chandler suffered minor head injuries when he spun out a Ferrari automobile on the road in Oxnard. The youngest son, Michael, also worked in the papers production departments, ultimately taking early retirement in a companywide buyout. I think he saw leaving Missy as getting his freedom in one way, said David Laventhol, publisher of The Times from 1989 to 1994. But in the social pecking order of the Southern California elite, she was seen as a cut below the Chandlers, and they never let her forget it. Since mandatory retirement age for the publisher was then 65, that conveniently eliminated the 52-year-old Philip. Chandler would assume the newly created position of editor in chief of Times Mirror and, on Jan. 1, 1981, he would succeed Murphy as chairman. He hired the best people he could find and gave them the freedom, the resources and the challenge to take a newspaper that had been mocked as partisan, parochial and inferior and turn it into a publication that could no longer be sneered at. 'It was three outside members of the [Times Mirror] board who persuaded him to do it I dont know but I didnt have that choice.. Among them: the mate of the musk ox that nearly killed him in 1990. His Stanford roommate, Norman Nourse, suggested that he try the shotput throwing a 16-pound iron ball. The night he arrived home, his young familys possessions crammed into a used station wagon and rented trailer, his mother and father welcomed him enthusiastically. Retired Times publisher Otis Chandlers car collection included a 1931 Duesenberg LeBaron Special Phaeton. But William Thomas, who was Times editor when Chandler made his decision to step down as publisher, said he remembered sitting in a taxi with him in Madrid in 1975 before hed met Whitaker, when he was still married to Missy and hearing Otis say he wanted to give up the publishers job in three to five years. He set his sights on a goal making The Times one of the two or three great American papers and he pulled it off.. He eventually recovered from serious head injuries. Ruth Chandler 1897-1987. But in 1989, two months after Laventhol replaced Johnson as publisher, Day was removed. Almost 20 years after their divorce, the happily remarried Marilyn Brant DeYoung said she didnt think shed been competitive with Chandler, except on the tennis court, where I did get upset when he beat me. She said they had a wonderful marriage, and he was an involved father, especially when he was younger, before he was publisher.. Chandler later insisted that he hadnt meant to demean blacks and Latinos, but the remark haunted him and the paper for many years. He also began to develop a love of speed and once had to do a stint in traffic school after getting a speeding ticket on his bicycle, he said. When he was a little older, he set up his own backyard basketball backboard and high-jump pit, and practiced both sports, by himself, hour after hour. Contact Information The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, CA 91108, Phone: (626) 405-2191; Email: reference@huntington.org, www.huntington.org Access-restricted-item true Addeddate He was particularly resentful of Willes frequent promise to reinvent the newspaper and Willes and Downings unwillingness to consult him. Unbeknown to the reporters and editors who worked on that project and to the entire editorial staff of The Times the paper had agreed to share the profits from the issue with Staples Center as part of a complicated arrangement by which The Times became a founding partner of the arena. The shift on the editorial page came as the region itself, once dependably Republican, was becoming less conservative. I must confess, he said, I am getting darn tired of defending myself as a hunting person.. 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