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Joe Bean
Joe Patrick Bean, 51, of Austin, died Dec. 24, 2009, at University Medical Center Brackenridge in Austin.
He was hospitalized Dec. 17 after suffering a severe head injury in a fall in the parking garage where he worked, and died eight days later following a massive heart attack.
Bean was a public affairs specialist for the Texas State Teachers Association and a regular exhibitor for TSTA in the annual Texas Press trade shows.
He earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. He taught journalism for several years at Concordia University in Austin. His career included work as a book reviewer for the Victoria Advocate, as an editorial writer and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News, and as opinion page editor for the Muskogee (Okla.) Daily Phoenix and Times-Democrat.
Bruce Bissonette
Bruce Earl Bissonette, 85, died Dec. 9, 2009, of congestive heart failure at Eden Assisted Living in El Paso.
Bissonette was a police, fire, military and aviation reporter for the El Paso Times throughout the 1960s and wrote an award-winning column, “Prop Pitch,” until 1974. His media career in El Paso also included work as a television reporter, camera operator and news director. He was known as “Uncle Earl,” the co-host of a morning radio show.
He founded Skyway Products, a small custom manufacturing company that produced aviation supplies in the 1970s and dabbled in acting and photography. In 1972, he play a small role in the Steve McQueen movie, “The Getaway,” filmed partly in El Paso.
Lyn Blackmon
Lyn Blackmon, 78, died Jan. 14, 2010, at her home in Texarkana.
Blackmon, a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, was a long-time arts and entertainment reporter for the Texarkana Gazette.
She joined the newspaper in 1965 as a general assignment repoter. She covered the police beat, courts and politics until 1970, when she left the job. She returned in 1982, working as the newspaper’s part-time librarian and in 1985 moved to the job of feature writer and arts and entertainment reporter. She retired in 1999.
Larry Gage
Larry R. Gage, 76, died Jan. 7, 2010, at Garden Terrace nursing facility in Houston, after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease.
A graduate of then-East Texas State College in Commerce, Gage earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1955. While attending college, he worked at newspapers. He completed some of his course work by correspondence in order to work in the Austin office of U.S. Sen. Sam Rayburn. He served in the U.S. Army from 1955 to 1957 and earned as master’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin in 1959, where he met his wife, Mary Angeline Smith, also a journalism student.
He began his newspaper career at the Jacksoville Journal and later became state editor and editor for the Brownwood Bulletin, where he worked for 1959 to 1966. He joined the Houston Chronicle in 1966 and worked there for 34 years. He was a member of the Chronicle editorial board when he retired in 2000.
Bob Green
James Robert “Bob” Green, 85, of Albany, died at his family ranch on Dec. 22, 2009.
Green was born on the ranch and grew up in Shackelford County, attending schools in Albany and Breckenridge before enrolling in the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell.
Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, he, along with many of his classmates, enlisted in the U.S. Army. He earned Silver Star and Bronze Star medals for battle action at Leyte and as a tank platoon leader at Okinawa.
A rancher, gardener, writer and historian, Green wrote a weekly column for the Albany News and was a frequent contributor to the Abilene Reporter-News. He was the voice of Fandangle, the community-produced pioneer pageant at Fort Griffin, near Albany, every year in late June.
Deborah Howell
Deborah Howell, 68, died Jan. 2, 2010, after being struck by a car while vacationing in New Zealand.
Howell was the daughter of San Antonio newspaperman and broadcaster Henry Howell. She was born in San Antonio.
In the early 1960s, Howell worked as an intern at the Austin American-Statesman. She graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin.
She was a copy editor for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times before joining the Minneapolis (Minn.) Star as a reporter in 1965. She was city editor for four years, one of the few women to hold such a post in those days, and was promoted to managing editor. In 1979, she left the Star for the St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, where she advanced from assistant managing editor to managing editor in 1982 and executive editor in 1984. While there, she led the newsroom to win two Pulitzer Prizes. In 1990, she was hired as chief of the Newhouse News Service Washington bureau and her staff won a Pulitzer while she was there.
She was named ombudsman for the Washington Post in 2005 and served until she retired in 2008.
Elizabeth McClellan
Elizabeth “Betty” Josephine Mahood McClellan, 82, of Kerrville, died Dec. 25, 2009, in a Stamford care facility.
McClellan was born and grew up in Stamford and worked there as a stringer for the Abilene Reporter News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and The Dallas Morning News. She attended Texas Tech University and the University of Texas at Austin. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Houston in 1974.
In 1963 she and her husband, Alton F. McClellan Jr., moved to Austin and in 1969 the family moved to Houston, where she worked for Houston Public Library. The McClellans retired and moved to Kerrville in 1976.
Bill Maddox
Bill R. Maddox, 71, of San Antonio, died Jan. 3, 2010, after a long battle with cancer.
Maddox had worked for Public Strategies Inc. in Austin for 13 years before retiring in 2009.
He attended Paris Junior College, majoring in journalism. In 1961, he started a 15-year newspaper career, starting as a reporter for daily newspapers in Irving, Tyler, Marshall and finally, Port Arthur, where he served as executive editor. He won many awards in Texas Press Association better newspaper contests and served on the TPA board of directors.
He left the newspaper business and served nine years as press secretary for the Congressional Joint Economic Committee for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, having been appointed by then-U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas.
John Newell
John Keith Newell, 91, died Jan. 18, 2010.
A native of Arkansas and a graduate of the University of the Ozarks, the young Newell’s part-time job as a Linotype machine operator at a Clarksville, Ark., newspaper made a lasting impression.
In World War II, Newell was in the Army, serving in Iwo Jima, Saipan and Guam. He met his wife in Memphis, Tenn., at a USO and proposed marriage in a letter containing a ring. She wrote back, “Yes.”
Newell went on to work for the Arkansas Democrat, the Arkansas Gazette and The Associated Press, all in Little Rock. He joined the San Antonio Express in 1951 as telegraph editor. Before retiring in 1983, he had been science editor, news editor, assistant managing editor and managing editor of the evening paper.
He loved writing headlines and won 13 AP headline-writing awards.
Roy Scudday
Roy Sheppard Scudday, 88, of Fort Davis, died at his home in Fort Davis on Jan. 6, 2010.
Scudday was a 1938 graduate of Newman High School, now Sweetwater High School, and attended the University of Texas at Austin where he received a bachelor of arts degree in journalism in 1942.
That same year he joined the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant and did not return to the United States until 1945, having participated in seven major invasions in the Pacific against the Japanese.
After the war, he worked for newspapers in Odessa, Victoria, Houston, and Wichita Falls. He served as editor of the Sweetwater Reporter from 1953-1957.
He then worked in public relations in Fort Worth and Austin during which he was active in politics with the Texas Democratic Party, working on the campaigns of several Texas office holders and candidates in the 1960s and 1970s.
He then worked for the General Land Office, after which he opened an appraisal firm, Roy Scudday and Associates, in Fort Davis. He operated the firm until 2008, during which period his wife Ann served as Jeff Davis county judge.
Scudday was buried with full military honors at Sweetwater Cemetery.
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