She was athletic, she surfed, she hunted and she was always vying for equal status or greater status than Otis, said Howard Gilmore, one of Chandlers longtime hunting companions. Growing up, Chandler had often said hed like to be a doctor, although he later conceded, I was never an outstanding scholar. When he left the Air Force in 1953, he had no clear sense of what he wanted to do with his life. Most historians credit Otis mother Buff to her friends and family with persuading her husband to make their son his successor. His goal, he once quipped, was to make it a militant middle-of-the-road paper.. I think he saw leaving Missy as getting his freedom in one way, said David Laventhol, publisher of The Times from 1989 to 1994. The 1962 gubernatorial campaign was another. As a student he competed in basketball, soccer, the high jump, running and weightlifting. Chandler attended Stanford, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Sigma Rho chapter). Both refused. I occasionally hunt with a bow I am a saltwater fisherman and dry-fly freshwater fisherman, a gun collector, a sometime skeet and target shooter, an avid backpacker, outdoor photographer, trophy skinner, wild game gourmet but a lousy cook. Williams and Frank McCullough, one of the papers two managing editors, agreed at the outset of the gubernatorial campaign to monitor the coverage inch by inch to ensure that both candidates were covered fairly and equally. Or did it, in some way, lead the region into change? For him a project is a process, a growth. This was the only big investment I ever made, and I didnt do any investigation of it beforehand. More than most high-level executives, Chandler also seemed willing to interrupt the workday occasionally when pleasure beckoned. Going with newspapers only is a flawed strategy, a dangerous philosophy that puts The Times at risk. 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. Despite the liberalization of The Times editorial page under Chandler, he remained moderate, even conservative, on many issues, feminism among them. Otis, meanwhile, still had no idea what his mother and father had in mind for him. Chandler liked the shotput and weightlifting, he once said, because they were individual sports, and he could be judged on his own merits. Elisha Graves Otis Print Family Tree Born 3 August 1811 - Halifax, Windham Co., VT Deceased 8 April 1861 - Yonkers, Westchester Co., NY,aged 49 years old Founder of the Otis Elevator Co. 1 file available Parents Stephen Otis 1773-1859 Phoebe Glynn 1778-1867 Spouses, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren [1], "Oats" was Chandler's nickname within the family. Find records of Otis Chandler Birth records Marriage records Divorce records . Chandler immediately excelled, breaking the school freshman record with a toss of 48 feet, 761/47 inches. [1], His son, Mike Chandler, was a race-car driver in the CART Championship Car series. He foresaw the sprawling megalopolis that Los Angeles and its neighboring counties would become, and he wanted The Times to be the dominant paper from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border.. He withdrew from Dartmouth and moved to Los Angeles for his health. The youngest son, Michael, also worked in the papers production departments, ultimately taking early retirement in a companywide buyout. As it happened, the consultants also recommended that, to ensure stability, the new publisher be capable of holding the job at least 15 years. Not once did the article refer to Brown by name. To grasp the breadth of the changes, it is necessary to understand what The Times had been. He was particularly resentful of Willes frequent promise to reinvent the newspaper and Willes and Downings unwillingness to consult him. [1] The GeoTek debacle helped greatly exacerbate the colon problem. There is something about him that suggests if Otis Chandler hadnt existed, Ernest Hemingway would have created him, the Christian Science Monitor said in 1980. [1], Chandler died at his home in Ojai at the age of 78 due to the effects of Lewy body disease, seven months after his diagnosis. Married Harry Chandler . He lost part of the big toe on his left foot, saw another toe severely damaged and the rest of the foot became largely numb. [1] Its not their kind of newspaper, he said. He said I had to be well-rounded and implied that it was so I could ultimately take some executive position. Emma Marian Otis 1866-1952. 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. 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. Katharine Graham, who became publisher of the Washington Post three years after Chandler took over The Times, and who relied on him as a mentor in her first days on the job, said in a 1999 interview the day after her 82nd birthday, when she was still very much involved with the Post Im so committed to the company and so is Punch [former New York Times Publisher Sulzberger] that I cant imagine one of us actually leaving. The outdoors is my second home, my chapel, my retreat, my great love in life.. Their son Harry concurred, although he also agreed with his mother that most of the familys leisure activities revolved around what Dad wanted to do camping, water skiing, cliff-jumping, surfing. Two years later, he was considered a cinch to be one of three shotputters on the U.S. team for the Olympic Games in Helsinki, but he sprained his wrist before the tryouts and had to pull out the biggest disappointment of my life, he recalled almost 50 years later. He was also so disenchanted with the management of Times Mirror by then that, to the dismay of many, he not only didnt fight or even criticize the sale but instead embraced it as a very positive move a perfect fit a win-win situation.. Retired Times publisher Otis Chandlers car collection included a 1931 Duesenberg LeBaron Special Phaeton. Chandler started prep school at Cate, in Carpinteria, but his parents thought hed find a greater challenge and broader perspective back East, so after a year they transferred him to Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. Thomas was largely responsible for the great length and literary style of many Times stories qualities for which the paper became both celebrated and criticized. Direct, decisive and at times startlingly frank in both his personal and professional lives, Chandler told people what he expected of them, and he didnt have much patience with failure. They said I might be able to lift my hand to my mouth, but just barely and only after two years and only if I exercised it properly, he recalled. When I asked what he did, he just said, I work at The Times,. Thomas recalled. By the time he left the publishers office, it had increased tenfold during his tenure. 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. Still, he wanted to be bigger and stronger, so shortly after graduation, he took up weightlifting. He had family money, but he had looked on GeoTek as another chance to prove he could succeed on his own, and he wound up embarrassed and forced by the exposure to return his stock and finders fees. In 1948 the Chandler family had started a second newspaper, an afternoon tabloid called the Los Angeles Mirror, and as part of his training program, Otis worked there too. . 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. He was also consumed by another passion: buying classic cars for his museum. Chandler was diagnosed seven months ago, although doctors had determined about a year earlier that he was suffering from some form of dementia, his wife said. The only other possible publisher in the family, however, was Normans younger brother Philip, then general manager of The Times and a member of the Times Mirror board. If he hadnt divorced Missy, Im not sure he wouldve left the paper. 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 acknowledged that it was a difficult time for newspapers, but he disagreed vigorously with Willes approach. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. When he started buying vintage cars again several years later, he purchased another 1931 Duesenberg, this time for $1.2 million, en route to building another world-class collection. 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. 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. When, by late September, it appeared that Brown might win as he ultimately did Times political editor Kyle Palmer, the papers lead reporter on the campaign, wrote a column acknowledging that the situation sounds a trifle grim for us Republicans.. Of all the political figures to benefit from The Times partisanship over the years, none had been more favored, or more successful, than Nixon. Even Chandler said some of those long stories made the paper seem gray, somewhat dull at times. Within an hour, I had gathered things up in my briefcase, told my secretary, Well, we can shine those afternoon meetings off, and headed for Dana Point.., In a speech to a hunting conference in 1980, he described some of his other outdoor pursuits: I am primarily a gun hunter, both rifle and shotgun. Chandler said there was no simple answer: The region was changing, the demographic was changing, the type of paper was changing, he said. By his strength and by his judgment of good journalists, he was of unique importance in the history of the Los Angeles Times.. Father of Private; Michael Otis "Mike" Chandler; Norman Brant Chandler; Private and Private He said to me many times that he hadnt wanted to come to the paper in the first place, but he felt an obligation to his family to do it, said Robert F. Erburu, who succeeded Chandler as Times Mirror chairman. . [1], Chandler enrolled at his parents' alma mater, Stanford University, in 1946. Former Times publisher Tom Johnson, left, greets Otis Chandler at a USC Annenberg Distinguished Achievement Awards dinner in January 2000. Then, on April 11, 1960, Norman Chandler invited more than 700 people to a luncheon at the Biltmore Bowl ballroom in downtown Los Angeles, where he promised a special announcement.. When he strides out of a meeting to shake hands, it is like looking up at a California redwood., Anthony Day, The Times editorial page editor from 1971 until 1989, once said: After I had been working for Otis for a few years, it occurred to me that I was working for a prince, a man who had been raised to be a prince.. Thomas, who was among the editors brought over from the Mirror, said he believed that the windfall of local talent was as responsible for The Times subsequent success as the hiring of big guns from the East. Like his father, who had also been kept on tight purse strings by his father, Otis often split the bill with his fiancee or let her pick up the tab when they dated. He was, in general, something of a loner, a trait he traced partly to spending my young years on that ranch in Sierra Madre, a little remote, rather than on a neighborhood street with a lot of kids. Asked repeatedly in one interview to name his best childhood friends, he came up blank. But in 1968, the paper endorsed Democrat Alan Cranston for U.S. Senate over Republican Max Rafferty, whom it called an outspoken, militant conservative.. He finished second in the nation, third in the heavyweight division at the national weightlifting championships that year. Like many women of her generation, Marilyn Chandler had long put her own career interests on hold to raise their children. Otis is someone whos very used to having his own way, and she impeded that.. When The Times consistently provided editorial support for various downtown redevelopment projects, civic activists were quick to say the projects would enhance the value of the Chandler familys real estate interests there. As a Times columnist, he would become one of the most celebrated sportswriters ever. 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. 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. I thought Otis was committed in the same way, she said. Id work the graveyard shift for a week, then spend a week on days, then a week on the swing shift, then back to the graveyard shift, he recalled. As a boy, he would stand alongside his father and grandfather at Hollywood Cemetery (now Hollywood Forever) in annual memorials to the victims of a bomb blast that wrecked the Times building in 1910, killing 20 workers. After the series was published, Otis asked for an editorial criticizing the Birchers. Otis said he wanted a more assertive, more liberal editorial page, Day said. In lieu of flowers, the family asked that donations be made to the Boys and Girls Clubs, the Central Coast chapter of the Alzheimers Association in Santa Barbara, or the Livingston Memorial Visiting Nurse Association/Hospice of Ventura. He eventually recovered from serious head injuries. Compare DNA and explore genealogy for Otis Ashmore Chandler born 1891 Five Points, Banks, Georgia, United States died 1956 DeKalb, Georgia, United States including ancestors + children + Y-chromosome DNA + more in the free family tree community. The Times, he would later say, was very much in his blood even then. And that apparently gave Mrs. Chandler the opening she needed. In college, he had sometimes worked summers at the paper, most often using his physical strength to move printing plates and other heavy items and equipment. 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. Thats more than I ever heard from Mark Willes.. They resented my position at the L.A. Times and felt there were a lot of things I could have done differently.. Chandler was the great-grandson of Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, the blustery Civil War veteran who bought part-ownership of The Times in 1882, a year after it began publication, and was its publisher for 35 years. The statement was a stinging and unprecedented rebuke of Willes and Downing. By 1962, Palmer was gone and the gubernatorial race between Brown and Richard Nixon was covered primarily by two new reporters: Richard Bergholz, who had come from the Mirror, and Carl Greenberg, from Hearsts Los Angeles Examiner. 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. Grandson of Harrison Gray Otis. [1], Chandler was raised on a 10-acre (40,000m2) citrus ranch in Sierra Madre owned by his parents. [1], A sprained wrist kept him from competing as a shot putter for the United States in the 1952 Summer Olympics. He was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position. Harry Chandler was born in Landaff, New Hampshire to Moses K. and Emma J. By the time he enrolled at Stanford University in 1946, he weighed about 200 pounds. Otis Chandler died at age 51 years old in March 1971. And he wrote an exhaustive, if somewhat ponderous, seven-part series about the treatment of mentally ill children. Buff Chandler was the daughter of a prominent Long Beach family, owners of the successful Buffums department store. My style was to do the job and push the boundaries, and once Otis realized I knew what I was doing, he let me do it, Thomas said. Three years after that, he began construction on a 5,500-square-foot home in Ojai, about 30 minutes from his museum. On the fringes of that movement and especially active in Southern California was an ultra-right-wing organization known as the John Birch Society. I decided it was time to be a little selfish, to give myself full time to the things Id always enjoyed doing in bits and pieces., He may also have been frustrated by his inability to reach his stated goal of supplanting the New York Times as the most widely admired American newspaper. His first year, he increased it 45%. For most of the first 80 years of its existence, the paper was such a journalistic laughingstock that humorist S.J. Because he had five children and heavy corporate responsibilities, his wife tried to dissuade him from this favored leisure time activity. I started work right away, on the graveyard shift, midnight to 8 in the morning. He was a pressroom apprentice, at $48 a week, the equivalent of $356 in todays dollars. It is Marilyn Brant. He was turned down because he was 17 pounds heavier than the maximum allowed for jet pilots, so he starved himself and quickly lost the weight. Chandlers primary role was to provide the impetus, framework and financial support for change, rather than dictating specifics. 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. 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.. When many top Times executives proved either reluctant to change or incapable of meeting his standards after he became publisher, he replaced 22 of 23 department heads within the first year. He wanted the paper to take what he called more balls out positions, and he wanted us to change our position and editorialize against the war in Vietnam.. He built a newspaper that was as great as the city it covers. 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