otis chandler family tree

He was convinced that he had taken The Times about as far as he could, and he wanted more challenges and more freedom. Williams wrote a new one, warning that the Birchers extremism and smear tactics were subversive acts that could sow distrust and weaken the very strong case for conservatism. Chandler signed it and published it on Page 1. In 1998, Chandler dissolved his last official ties with The Times. 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. Hes restless. I said he was a great man who made this paper what it was, Boyarsky would say later. Chandler made improvement of the paper's quality a top priority, succeeding in raising the product's reputation, as well as its profit margins. Chandler immediately excelled, breaking the school freshman record with a toss of 48 feet, 761/47 inches. Respect and credibility for a newspaper is irreplaceable.. After the series was published, Otis asked for an editorial criticizing the Birchers. As a weightlifter, Chandler finished third in the nation competing in the heavyweight division. [1], In 1998, at age 71, Chandler suffered minor head injuries when he spun out a Ferrari automobile on the road in Oxnard. But as the children grew up and she had more time available, she embarked on a career of her own she got womens lib is how Chandler put it and that exacerbated tensions between them. Although Chandler worried that the papers standing among opinion-makers would decline and that the new management was no longer committed to making The Times the best newspaper in the country, he said others in the Chandler family didnt share his concerns or his priorities. Word that Chandler was breaking his silence ricocheted through the newsroom. Ruth Chandler 1897-1987. During his tenure it would expand to 34 foreign and domestic bureaus. They didnt like the L.A. Times, he said in the 2005 interview. It could be said that the anti-Otis crowd beat up on him so much that he just gave up, said former editorial page editor Day. Some close to the family and the paper suggest that it might have been Mrs. Chandler who asked the board members to pressure her husband to step aside as publisher so he could devote his full attention to his chairmanship of the parent Times Mirror company, which was about to embark on a major diversification program. "No publisher in America improved a paper so quickly on so grand a scale, took a paper that was marginal in qualities and brought it to excellence as Otis Chandler did," journalist David Halberstam wrote in his history of the company.[1]. He gradually worked his way through every department at the paper: production, circulation, the mailroom, mechanical, advertising, the newsroom. Not long after, he left his wife, and three years later a year after he moved out of the Times publishers office he and Whitaker, 12 years his junior, were married. The stories described the Birchers extremist tactics and positions and, largely through their own words, depicted them as a threat to, rather than a defender of, the American way of life. Everyone wondered why, at so young an age, he would step away from something that he had had such an enormous impact in building, Louis D. Boccardi, former president and chief executive officer of Associated Press, said more than a decade later. Doctors estimated that his dislocated right arm would never fully heal, but, citing a disciplined training regimen, Chandler claimed to regain virtually all use. But in 1968, the paper endorsed Democrat Alan Cranston for U.S. Senate over Republican Max Rafferty, whom it called an outspoken, militant conservative.. Jack Burke, Chandlers close friend since their days together at Stanford, had assembled an exploratory oil-drilling company called GeoTek in the late 1960s and early 70s. Would I have wanted to stay, given what was happening at The Times and Times Mirror? Chandler asked a year after stepping down. [1] For all his seeming calm and control throughout his life, he had suffered from sporadic bouts of insomnia and intestinal pain diagnosed as a spastic colon ever since he became publisher. Most of his early jobs in the training program were just that jobs, a grinding routine, he later said and because his father wanted him to have as many Times experiences (and meet as many Times employees) as possible, his schedule was constantly changing. But it was clear that he had felt a growing personal animosity toward Willes, and he saw the takeover as a repudiation of Willes and a vindication of his own criticism. FOR THE RECORD:In an earlier version of this article, the date of the Helsinki Olympic Games was incorrectly given as 1948. Father of Private; Michael Otis "Mike" Chandler; Norman Brant Chandler; Private and Private 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.. Later he would briefly attend the Cate School boarding school in Carpinteria before his parents elected to send him east to attend Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Ultimately, there was little that Chandler could or would do to influence the fate of The Times beyond this brief but dramatic entry into the fray. [1], In 1986, Chandler won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism to honor his years of service to the newspaper.[3]. President-elect Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy Reagan, are honored at the Los Angeles Music Center in 1980 during an event hosted by Otis Chandler and his mother, Dorothy. [1], Chandler enrolled at his parents' alma mater, Stanford University, in 1946. Willes made several major cutbacks and refocused the companys efforts on newspapers, saying Times Mirror should concentrate on the business it knew best. Chandler tried to make amends, claiming he had been misquoted, but the damage had been done. In a cover story on Chandler in 1967, Newsweek said, In the six years since his father made him publisher of The Times, Chandler has staged one of the most remarkable palace revolutions in U.S. journalism. Constance Chandler 1896-1962. Not only did it champion GOP candidates, its editors helped select them. The Hearst paper was subsequently hit by a devastating strike and ceased publication in 1989. He remained an avid reader of the paper. Despite that, Chandler did not envision journalism as a career during his youth; instead, he often said he would like to become a doctor. 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. He put in long hours, but he managed to have dinner with his family most nights, even if it meant doing more work at home after dinner. Many Chandler associates said his marriages breakup and the end of his publishership were inextricably intertwined. It was the best down time I ever had, and I always kept a notebook with all the things I wanted to do when I got back.. 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. I think building houses is a replacement for the satisfaction he got from The Times, his wife, Bettina, said just before construction began on the Ojai house. [citation needed]. At the same time, it doubled its circulation to more than 1 million daily and for many years during and after his tenure published more news and more advertising than any other newspaper in the United States. ADVERTISEMENT BY ANCESTRY.COM. Three top editors asked Boyarsky not to read the statement aloud, fearing that it would further provoke an already enraged staff. There Chandler spent much of his time alone, later in life unable to name a single childhood friend. 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. But he also had a princes sense of entitlement, a sense that perhaps I dont have to do this every damn day, he added. The paper's Sunday magazine on October 10, 1999, was a special issue dedicated to the new Staples Center sports arena in downtown L.A., home to the Lakers, Clippers and Kings. Willes had taken charge of the company after a deep and prolonged recession that hit The Times particularly hard; circulation at the paper was declining, and both the stock price and the profits of Times Mirror were falling even faster. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position. But when Williams, the editor, suggested that the paper look into the organization anyway, both Otis and Norman Chandler gave him the go-ahead. Though Chandler said he was naturally saddened that Times Mirror will cease to exist and saddened by the end of local ownership, he had wondered aloud for at least five years whether Times Mirror could continue to thrive on its own in the turn-of-the-century mega-media merger environment. He saw them both as restraints on his freedom. 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. MyHeritage Family Trees; FamilySearch Family Tree; WikiTree; Geni World Family Tree; California Deaths, 1940 - 1997; U.S. Social Security Death Index (SSDI) U.S . Given the principal players on both sides, the deal, or one very much like it, was probably inevitable, with or without Otis and without or without Staples. Chandler realized that to build up The Times reputation, he had to demand fair and nonpartisan news coverage. Chandler was elated; many who knew him well and saw him after that race said they had rarely seen him happier. Instead they always find new ways to spend money.. Otis himself offered contradictory explanations of his mothers role in his promotion, befitting a mother-son relationship that had its share of paradox. In August 1972, the Wall Street Journal broke the story, which dragged on for several years before a federal court sentenced Burke to 30 months in prison. The explosion was blamed on union militants, and, Otis once said, I was raised to hate the unions. (He later mellowed on that topic, although he always opposed unionization at The Times.). Knowing that he couldnt create a high-quality, widely respected news organization if he relied exclusively on wire service reports and his existing staff, he began hiring top reporters and editors from other major news organizations and opening Times bureaus around the world. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position. Thats when I decided this was the business for me.. Hed put you in there, and he let you do it and if you werent performing, out you went.. When stories in local alternative weeklies, followed by the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, disclosed details of the deal, the newsroom erupted in protest, circulating petitions and demanding an apology from Downing, the publisher, who had signed the original founding partner agreement. Chandler was no typical rookie. So did the shutdown in January 1962 of the Mirror and the Examiner, the morning Hearst newspaper. We collect and match historical records that Ancestry users have contributed to their family trees to create each person's profile. [1], Chandler was raised on a 10-acre (40,000m2) citrus ranch in Sierra Madre owned by his parents. And he wrote an exhaustive, if somewhat ponderous, seven-part series about the treatment of mentally ill children. By all accounts, the family enjoyed their outdoor experiences together, for Chandler focused on his children as intensely as he did on everything else that mattered in his life. Since his first run for Congress in 1946, he had been championed by The Times as he successfully ran for U.S. Senate and then for the vice presidency on the Eisenhower ticket. In a controversial 1996 story in Vanity Fair, Chandler was quoted as criticizing his relatives as coupon clippers elitists bored with the problems of AIDS and the homeless and drive-by shootings. They wished The Times wouldnt cover those issues, and they werent interested in either the papers editorial quality or its social responsibility, he said. Lewy body disease is a brain disorder combining some of the most debilitating characteristics of Parkinsons and Alzheimers diseases. He thought they had committed transgressions that jeopardized the reputation and credibility he had worked so diligently to establish. Chandler knew and trusted Burke. But he was hardly unaware of his familys powerful position. Otis, meanwhile, still had no idea what his mother and father had in mind for him. You cannot overstate the importance of Otis Chandlers impact on the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper industry and all of Southern California, said current Times Publisher Jeff Johnson (no relation to Tom Johnson). But he persisted and in 1978 at age 50, after years of what he called Walter Mitty fantasies about becoming a race car driver finally got a chance to race professionally. The corporate air was a little too rarified for him, said Swayze, his secretary. He always has to have a project. When I came, recalled Day, the former editorial page editor, I thought [Otis] was going to build a progressive newspaper dynasty like the Washington Post or the New York Times. I think he fears that he would die if he werent building something.. Both refused. Mark has the stock price and dividends up, and thats all they care about.. You transformed the entire staff, he said, and the whole place had a totally different attitude.. He died in 2002. On one memorable occasion, a hotel maid walked in on him while he was doing full squats with his wife on his shoulders in place of a barbell. After his divorce, Chandler had begun to move his primary residence so often two places in Malibu, then Hancock Park, back to Malibu, Ojai, Rancho Matilija, Oregon, Ojai again that his children began teasing him about it. Chandler changed The Times so dramatically and became so identified with the paper that when he left the publishers office at age 52, and again when he relinquished his corporate titles five years later, employees at The Times and Chandlers peers throughout the industry were both stunned and puzzled. He broke the freshman school record with a toss of 48 feet (15m), 761/47inches. For the first time in five years, I felt like I wasnt a leper. Regardless, Chandler welcomed the outcome, largely because of his dissatisfaction with the existing management of Times-Mirror. Contact Information The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, CA 91108, Phone: (626) 405-2191; Email: [email protected], www.huntington.org Access-restricted-item true Addeddate The two had hunted together, and Burke was the godfather of Chandlers eldest daughter, Cathleen. Many at The Times hoped that in the aftermath of that re-emergence, Chandler would use his moral authority to help reverse what he and they saw as the declining fortunes of the paper. Otis Chandler, whose vision and determination as publisher of the Los Angeles Times from 1960 to 1980 catapulted the paper from mediocrity into the front ranks of American journalism, died. Southern California was considered a cultural backwater, and despite his familys vast wealth and power, Chandler felt like a hick. The Mirror was losing $30,000 a week, and Otis sent his father a confidential memo urging that a strong business manager be hired. But in a letter to his mother 12 years later, Otis referred to her as that person who made it possible for me to provide leadership to The Times, adding: It was a tremendous gamble for you to take on any young man of 32. There was no mention of his father. It wasnt as much fun.. They would race their cars down the Pasadena Freeway at 140 mph in the predawn hours en route to weightlifting sessions at the Times gym and double cheeseburgers at Tommys, just west of downtown. Over time, Chandler and others said, that began to wear on him. The change that ignited the biggest debate was Willes announced intention to blow up, with a bazooka, if necessary, the wall that had traditionally separated and insulated the newsroom of the paper from the business department to avoid conflicts of interest. Despite the enormous difference in their socioeconomic status, the two remained close friends for more than 30 years. Thats not in my nature, he said. Many people wondered if, in retrospect, Chandlers entire tenure at The Times had compromised his passion for freedom if he would have been happier had he been outside all the time, surfing, hunting, riding and racing, instead of being stuffed into a suit, sitting behind a desk, making speeches and attending meetings. The 1962 gubernatorial campaign was another. Bureaus opened in Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Rome, Bonn, London, Vienna and San Francisco, at the United Nations and on Wall Street. He hunted. Born in Los Angeles on Nov. 23, 1927, Chandler was the only son of Norman Chandler and Dorothy Buffum Chandler. There was widespread speculation after he gave up his corporate titles that he had been gently nudged aside by long-disgruntled family members. Buffum), Michael Otis "mike" Chandler, Norman Brant Chandler, From http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2010/09/found-on-ebay-norman-chandler.html, From http://www.laopera.org/tickets/Plan-Your-Visit/About-the-Music-Center/Dorothy-Buffum-Chandler/, U.S. Social Security Applications and Claims, 1936-2007. This paper what it was, Boyarsky would say later freshman record with a toss of 48 feet ( ). Of his time alone, later in life unable to name a single childhood friend it and it... Although he always opposed unionization at the Times. ) Times, he had taken the Times and Times?. Committed transgressions that jeopardized the reputation and credibility for a newspaper is..! Unionization at the Times. ) the Times reputation, he had to fair. After that race said they had rarely seen him happier fourth and final of! Through the newsroom on that topic, although he always opposed unionization at the.. 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