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Obituaries published in the April 2023 edition of the Texas Press Messenger.

EDWARD ASHER

HARLINGEN – Award winning writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Ed Asher, longtime night city editor for the Valley Star in Harlingen, died Feb. 21. He was 65.

Born in Charleston, W.Va., Asher grew up in a military family, moving around the world before settling in Houston. He was a prolific writer from a young age.

In 1980, he graduated from Southwest State University in San Marcos with a journalism degree and began work as took a reporter for the Valley Morning Star, covering national stories such as the Central American migrant influx, during which he reported from a migrant camp.

Asher went on to work at the Brownsville Herald, the Houston Chronicle and the Albuquerque Tribune, where he won two national writing awards and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for a story on health effects discovered years after nuclear testing at White Sands Missile Range, where the first nuclear bomb was detonated in 1945. In 2005, Asher returned to Texas and the Valley Star, taking a job as night city editor.

His colleagues remember him as an old-school journalist who cared about readers and upheld the ethics of news reporting while mentoring young writers. “I’m saddened of his passing,” said Stephan Wingert, editor and publisher of the Valley Morning Star, the McAllen Monitor and the Brownsville Herald. “Ed was the epitome of journalism. He was that original journalist, probably one of the finest journalists in our company.”

In recent years, Asher dealt with health problems. In late 2021, he was the last editor to leave the building in which the Star had been based since the 1950s.

No services were planned, according to Heavenly Grace Funeral Home in LaFeria.

MARK KYLE SANDERS

EUSTACE – Political strategist and former newspaper reporter Mark Kyle Sanders, 60, of Eustace died Feb. 20.

A native of Longview, he started his newspaper career while a high school student in Kingsville, working as a reporter for the Beeville Bee-Picayune. Midway through journalism school at the University of Texas at Austin, he left school to work for the Houston Post and later the Houston Chronicle, covering state politics in Austin.

Sanders eventually left journalism to work for the Republican Party of Texas, the beginning of his career in politics. The list of candidates and leaders he worked with over the years included a U.S. president and a presidential candidate, senators, congressmen, statewide and regional office seekers and county and local officials. He worked throughout the U.S., and his work took him to foreign countries, including Ukraine.

In addition to politics, he was a World War II history buff and enjoyed collecting artifacts.

A service celebrating his life was held Feb. 25 at Eubank Cedar Creek Funeral Home in Mabank. He was buried with many generations of his ancestors in Cottonwood Cemetery.

Memorials may be made to The Chosen, https://watch.angelstudios.com/thechosen/pif, or to the Henderson County Help Center, https://www.thehelpcenter.org/.