Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Thursday, February 03, 2011 at 06:11:08 :
Marin Independent Journal
Tuesday, August 28, 1990
Section B, page 2
Richard E. Pearce
Former Examiner editor
Richard E. Pearce of Lucas Valley, a retired associate editor of the San Francisco Examiner whose career as a reporter, editor and author spanned 50 years, died at home Saturday, Aug. 25, 1990. He was 80.
Mr. Pearce retired in 1975 as associate editor and editor of the editorial page of the Examiner. He subsequently served as a consultant to the newspaper.
Mr. Pearce was a native of Oklahoma. He started his newspaper career at the age of 16 as a summer reporter on his hometown weekly, the El Reno American.
He worked his way through the University of Oklahoma on the student newspaper and as campus correspondent for metropolitan papers. After graduation, he worked as a reporter on Oklahoma City newspapers.
At 26, Mr. Pearce became political editor of the Oklahoma News, a Scripps-Howard paper. Writing about his life, he said that two years later he asked to be transferred out of the state “and away from all politics.” Believing certain high state officials were corrupt, he wrote he “had become disillusioned by the apparent indifference of the justice system and (my) own inability to develop hard evidence of the corruption.
“Within three years of (my) departure, several of the officials had been brought to trial for bribery and income tax evasion,” he wrote. “It was an enduring lesson … in the virtue of patience.”
Scripps-Howard moved him to its San Francisco News in 1937 as a general assignment reporter. He was hired by the Examiner a year later and remained there for the rest of his career. In 1954, Mr. Pearce was named editor of the editorial page and later also became associate editor responsible for the paper’s relations with the political and civic communities.
As editorial page editor, he said he abhorred “the me-too editorial that merely gave after-the-fact approval to actions by public officials.” A good newspaper, he said, “created a climate of public opinion through its editorials that helped good public officials do what they should do, forced weak pubic officials to do what they were afraid to do, and prevented dishonest ones from doing what they schemed to do.”
Long before the environmental movement, Mr. Pearce campaigned in editorial for freeway landscaping and highways free of billboards, better forest protection and an improved salmon fishery. His editorials played a role in creation of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the San Francisco Human Rights Commission.
Mr. Pearce began writing fiction in his spare time in the mid-1940s. He said he wrote his first story, a novelette, “to punish himself for succumbing to the lure of the poker table and losing $185 to newspaper colleagues.” It was published by the Saturday Evening Post, which more than made up for his poker loss.
“If the Post sale had just covered my poker loss, I would have been even and could have forgotten about the whole episode,” he recalled. “Instead, I was forced into an additional career.” He went on to write six novels, all serialized in the Post or Collier’s and later published as hardcover books. His short stories appeared as well in Cosmopolitan, American and Harper’s.
Mr. Pearce is survived by his wife of 50 years, Carol Pearce of Lucas Valley; two daughters, Sally McNulty of London and Betsy Glover of San Rafael; and three grandchildren.
A private service has been held.
He asked that memorial contributions go to Planned Parenthood in San Rafael and Hospice of Marin in Larkspur.
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