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(You
MAY need the FREE QuickTime
plug-in to view and hear s90tv) top top top top top top Otis
Chandler -- Publisher of the LA Times - 1960 to
1979. The
Man From Pasadena, Named
"Oats." • In Memory TODAY'S
PUZZLE? This
Week's
Cover
LookRadio • 120
PIXELS 3 columns Not
Pampered, Never Effete -- Just a man from
Pasadena 03
TIMELINE
- Shortly after
graduation from high school, he took up
weightlifting. By the time he enrolled at
Stanford University in 1946, he weighed
about 200
pounds. 2006
- March 6th. Family Eulogys and After
thoughts,
by Josie Cory, Publisher of Television
International
Magazine •
•
For the most part,
Monday's memorial was a relatively formal
and staid affair, more in keeping with
Chandler's boardroom persona than his
parallel life as a surfer dude, said the
LA Times. 4.
Bylines
/ Editor's
--
"It was a memorable
and enlightening event," said author,
entertainer, Troy Cory. The most startled
and unexpected, was the impromptu eulogy,
delivered by "Big Willie," Robinson, head
of a drag racing group organized to help
reduce racial tension and street crime. He
said "Big O," Chandler was instrumental in
helping him found the organization in
1966, and frequently attended its drag
races over the years. Chandler, Robinson
said, gave him the nickname "Big Willie,"
and he called the publisher "Big O."
POLITIANS
DIGNITARIES ATTENDING: More
Articles • Converging
News 072006 / TeleCom BuyOuts, Spinoffs
and Asset Seizure Boom Respectfully
Submitted top t top top top top 40 40+110+570=720
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Otis
Chandler, with his mother and Father,
Dorothy and Norman
•
•
Born in Los Angeles on Nov. 23, 1927,
Chandler was the only son of Norman Chandler and
Dorothy Buffum Chandler. Although Halberstam would
later say, "No single family dominates any other
region of this country as the Chandlers have
dominated California," Otis had a far-from-pampered
upbringing and was never a man who could be
described as effete.
•
•
"When I first met him, it was at my home in
Pasadena during a Stubblefield - China Art Exhibit
in late, 1993. There he coxed me over to his
favorite barber shop for a haircut and a mixture of
his "secret" vegitable juice he called,
"Olats".
I didn't know who he was at the time, he said --
just call him,"Oats," the name similiar to his
drink. -- Troy Cory.
MORE.
117OtisChandlerPasadenaBoy
Hong
Kong
Triad
/
"Jockey Club"
RadioPlayMusic
•
•
1927
-
Born in Los
Angeles on Nov. 23, 1927, Chandler was the
only son of Norman Chandler and Dorothy
Buffum Chandler.
•
•
"He used the same
tone of voice with the president of the
United States and the guy who came to
change the lightbulbs in his office," said
Donna Swayze, his executive secretary from
1962 to
1988.
•
•
John Thomas
remembers meeting Chandler -- and not
knowing who he was -- when Chandler took
one of his Porsches to the auto dealership
where Thomas worked as the parts manager
in the late 1960s. The two men introduced
themselves as "J.T." and "Oats"
(Chandler's longtime family nickname),
struck up a conversation about motorcycles
and soon began dirt-biking
together.
•
•
"When I asked what
he did, he just said, 'I work at The
Times,' " Thomas recalled. "But after
about 18 months, I accepted an invitation
to his house for dinner, and when I drove
up to this huge mansion in San Marino, I
thought, 'Holy cow!' When I got inside, I
said, 'Well, just what do you do at The
Times?'
"
•
•
Only then did
Chandler tell Thomas about himself and his
family. Despite the enormous difference in
their socioeconomic status, the two
remained close friends for more than 30
years.
1930s
-
When Chandler
was growing up, he lived with his parents
on a 10-acre citrus ranch in Sierra Madre.
His father, publisher of The Times from
1944 to 1960, had worked in the fields of
the family's Tejon Ranch when he was a
boy, so he saw no reason to spare his son
from physical labor or spoil him with
money.
•
•
Otis shoveled
fertilizer for the family fruit trees at
an early age and was kept on such a modest
allowance that even when he went to
college, he later recalled, "the most
lavish transportation I could afford was
half-interest in a secondhand
motorcycle."
•
•
For a time, when he
was young, Chandler rode a bicycle several
miles to and from the Polytechnic School
in
Pasadena.
•
•
But he was hardly
unaware of his family's powerful position.
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.
•
•
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.)
1946
-
College / His
Stanford roommate, Norman Nourse,
suggested that he try the shotput --
heaving a 16-pound iron ball. Chandler
immediately excelled, breaking the school
freshman record by putting the shot 48
feet, 7 1/4
inches.
•
•
Bulked up to 6 feet
3, 220 pounds as a senior in 1950, when he
was captain of the track team, he put the
shot 57 feet, 3/4 of an inch, to win the
Pacific Coast Conference championship.
1948
-
In 1948 the
Chandler family had started a second
newspaper, an afternoon tabloid called the
Los Angeles
Mirror.
1948
-
Otis 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, 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.
1950
-
After
graduating from Stanford, he tried to
enroll in an Air Force training program.
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. He was rejected
anyway; his shoulders and hips were still
too big to fit into the cockpit of a
jet.
1951 - He
was on the ground in the Air Force,
supervising sports and acting as
co-captain of the Air Force track team at
Camp Stoneman in the San Francisco Bay
Area.
•
•
Growing up,
Chandler had often said he'd 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.
1953 - 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).
1954 - AS A
NEWSPAPER JOURNALIST. After his Air
Force tenue, though, his father --
"grinning like a Cheshire cat," Chandler
would always remember -- handed him a
sheet of paper. On it, neatly typed, was a
seven-year "executive training program,"
scheduled to begin that Sunday
night.
•
•
"I said something
about wanting a week's vacation first, but
he wouldn't hear of it," Chandler said. "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 today's
dollars.
•
•
He gradually worked
his way through every department at the
paper: production, circulation, the
mailroom, mechanical, advertising, the
newsroom.
•
•
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.
•
•
"I'd 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.
•
•
Once he started as
a reporter, though, he began to feel
different about a career at The
Times.
•
•
"It was a watershed
experience," he said. "I loved being a
reporter. That's when I decided this was
the business for
me."
•
•
Chandler was no
typical rookie. He wrote offbeat
feature stories, such as the seven-part
series about the treatment of emotionally
disturbed
children.
•
•
He was also the
only reporter, rookie or veteran, whose
name regularly appeared in both the Sports
section, which chronicled his continuing
exploits as a competitive weightlifter,
and in the society pages, where his
attendance at various black-tie events
always rated a
mention.
•
•
He also showed his
father skills that went beyond the
reportorial. As part of his training
program, Otis worked the Los Angeles
Mirror, founded in 1948 by the Chandler
family. As he did in every posting at The
Times, he filled notebook after notebook
with his thoughts on possible
improvements.
•
•
The Mirror was
losing $30,000 a week, and Otis sent his
father a confidential memo urging that a
strong business manager be hired. He also
complained that the paper's editor and
publisher "never … try to come up
with new ways to cut the deficit. Instead
they always find new ways to spend
money."
•
•
Norman Chandler was
delighted by this practical evidence that
Otis had absorbed his childhood lessons of
prudence and thrift. Soon there was talk
of Otis becoming publisher of the Mirror
when he finished his training program --
most likely as one of the final steps
before he became publisher of The Times.
But the Mirror continued to falter, and
his parents decided they didn't want his
first command to be that of a sinking
ship.
1957 - In
October 1957, continuing his climb into
the executive ranks, Chandler was named
special assistant to his father. Two years
later, he was made marketing manager of
The Times. About that time, Otis began
telling Nick Williams, the editor of the
paper, the kinds of improvements he
envisioned making if and when he had the
authority.
1960 - Publisher
of The Times - 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."
•
•
On that wisp of a
lure, the room filled up with the cream of
the Southern California establishment:
corporate heads, college presidents,
prominent lawyers and judges, Los Angeles
Mayor Norris Poulson, members of the
county Board of Supervisors, former
California Gov. Goodwin J.
Knight.
•
•
There was an air of
anticipation as the elder Chandler stepped
to the microphone and said, after a bit of
reminiscing, "I hereby appoint, effective
as of this moment, Otis Chandler as
publisher of The
Times."
•
•
Otis stood up,
grinned and said, "Wow!"
1979 - Otis resigns from the LA Times.
The 20 years he headed the newspaper,
the face of the paper changed with Otis.
Otis became so dramatically identified
with the paper that when he left the
publisher's office at age 52, and again
when he relinquished his corporate titles
five years later, employees at The Times
and Chandler's peers throughout the
industry were both stunned and
puzzled.
1984 -
Otis relinquished his LA Times corporate
titles.
1990 -
1995 Otis retires to do what pleased him
around Pasadena
area.
1996 -
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 wouldn't
cover those issues, and they weren't
interested in either the paper's editorial
quality or its social responsibility, he
said.
•
•That
article deeply wounded some of the 160-odd
descendants of Otis' grandfather, family
patriarch Harry Chandler. Many had led
quietly productive lives outside the
newspaper industry and had tried to keep
their complaints about cousin Otis and The
Times within the family circle. Chandler
tried to make amends, claiming he had been
misquoted, but the damage had been
done.
•
•Several
prominent members of the family -- cousins
of Otis who reflect the more conservative
side of the family -- declined requests to
be interviewed for this article. Despite
Chandler's worries and despite what he
said was a "constant stream of calls and
letters" from Times executives past and
present, asking him to "do something"
about the direction of the newspaper, he
made no real effort for most of Willes'
tenure to influence what was happening at
Times Mirror Square.
1999 - Almost 20 years after he
left the publisher's office, (1979) -- and
with no official ties to the paper anymore
-- its standing was still so important to
him that he emerged from a largely
self-imposed exile and issued a strong
denunciation of top Times and Times Mirror
executives.
2000 - He recalled almost four decades
after his father said "I hereby appoint,
effective as of this moment, Otis Chandler
as publisher of The Times," he had "no
inkling what my dad was going to say until
an hour before the luncheon.
2006 - February 28 2006, Chandler,
78, died at 4 a.m. Monday at his home in
Ojai of a degenerative illness called Lewy
body disease, according to Tom Johnson, a
former publisher of The Times who was
acting as a spokesman for the Chandler
family. Chandler's wife, Bettina, was at
his bedside, and other family members had
gathered in and around their
home.
•
•
At Monday's memorial, held at the
All Saints Church in Pasadena, the Rev.
George Regas, the former rector of All
Saints who officiated at Otis and Bettina
Chandler's wedding, said Chandler was not
much of a churchgoer.
•
•
"Otis' church was
nature," he said. "His cathedral was
Planet
Earth."
•
•
" 'Let's be the
best' was the goal that Otis conveyed to
his family and those of us who worked for
him throughout the years," said Tom
Johnson, who took over as Times publisher
when Chandler stepped down in 1979.
•
•
Harry Chandler,
said in his eulogy. "He was an original,"
his son, "He broke the mold that his
parents and the extended Chandler family
and The Times had set for him."
•
•
Bettina Chandler
brought tears to many in the church when
she told a story about Chandler that
included a reference to his firstborn son,
Norman, who died of a brain tumor in 2002.
Otis, she said, woke up recently, when
disease was claiming his reasoning powers,
and announced to her: "I have to
pack."
•
•
"Where are you
going?" she
asked.
•
•
"I don't know,"
Chandler replied, "but Norman's coming for
me."
•
•
The eulogy's of
both Harry and Bettina Chandler brought
tears to the eyes of many. Harry described
how, in the minutes after his father's
death, just before dawn, he took a
ruminative stroll around the property
surrounding the elder Chandler's Ojai
home. After a couple of minutes, he said,
he turned to see a flock of large birds
circling over his father's bedroom. Otis
Chandler had always compared himself to
the eagle that is The Times' symbol,
saying that he wanted to
soar.
•
•
Harry said he
watched the birds "rising up, gliding
around and around, higher and higher," as
if lifting his father's soul
heavenward.
•
•
" 'Goodbye,' I
breathed, unable to speak. 'I will miss
you always.'
"
•
•
Lou Boccardi, the
former president and head of the
Associated Press, recalled that he once
told Chandler that he should write his
memoirs to ensure that his life and times
with The Times, were properly told.
Chandler, he said, seemed to be horrified
at the
suggestion.
•
•
"Maybe," Boccardi
said, "he understood that not everybody
had to leave a book. You could, as he did,
leave a newspaper, and it would speak
volumes about a
life."
•
•
As for the
interuption of the service by Big Willie
Robinson's impromptu eulogy, after the
service, I was told, Harry Chandler
approached Robinson and thanked him for
the
eulogy.
•
•
Had Otis Chandler never worked a
single day, his would have been a
memorable life. An Olympic-caliber
athlete, a champion weightlifter, an
accomplished race car driver, big game
hunter, surfer, cyclist, antique car and
motorcycle collector, Chandler, who died
Monday at 78, was a man whose avocations
alone were the stuff of
legend.
--"That's not in my nature,"
he said. "I don't butt in."
•
•
After the "Big
Willie" eulogy about auto racing and
street crime, Troy Cory, later recalled
and told his wife, Josie Cory, that it was
probably our old Stutz automobile that
attracted Chandler to our Rosemont home in
Pasadena - in late, 1993, "not the NBS
Stubblefield or China Art Exhibit."
•
•
"If I remember
right," said Troy, "Chandler came back two
days in a row gazing at the Stutz. During
Troy's two or three afternoon visits with
Chandler, it was on the second day
"Oats" brought along the vegtables
to make his "Olats" vegitable juice
in our mixer.
•
•
"Oats" brewed his
"Olats" drink, using our bar room
overlooking the Rose
Bowl.
MEDIA
NEWS DIGNITARIES ATTENDING:
•
•
Lou Boccardi,
Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Sr., the retired
publisher of the New York Times; William
Dean Singleton, the head of MediaNews
Group, which owns the Long Beach Press
Telegram and Los Angeles Daily News, among
other papers; Dennis FitzSimons, chief
executive of Tribune Co.; and Paul
Steiger, the managing editor of the Wall
Street
Journal.
•
•
•
•
There were, in
addition, nearly all the living editors
and publishers of The Times, past and
present. They included current editor Dean
Baquet and predecessors John Carroll,
Michael Parks, Shelby Coffey and William
F. Thomas, and publisher Jeff Johnson and
predecessors Richard Schlosberg III, David
Laventhol and Tom Johnson. Among dozens of
former Times staff members were cartoonist
Paul Conrad, retired Washington bureau
chief Jack Nelson and retired City Editor
Bill Boyarsky.
•
•
Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa was among a small contingent
of political leaders that included Los
Angeles County supervisors Yvonne
Brathwaite Burke, Gloria Molina and Zev
Yaroslavsky, and Los Angeles City Council
members Eric Garcetti, Tom LaBonge and
Dennis Zine.
Josie
Cory
Publisher/Editor
TVI
Magazine
•
• TVI
Magazine, tviNews.net, YES90, Your Easy
Search, Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, LA
Times, NY Times, VRA's D-Diaries, Industry
Press Releases, They Said It and
SmartSearch were used in compiling and
ascertaining this Yes90 news
report.
•
• ©1956-2007.
Copyright. All rights reserved by:
TVI Publications, VRA TelePlay Pictures,
xingtv and Big Six Media Entertainments.
Tel/Fax: 323 462.1099.
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114 People Section: The Publisher of the LA Times,
The Man From Pasadena, Named "Oats." -- Otis
Chandler, 78, died February 28 2006, Bettina
Chandler, was at his bedside, said Tom Johnson,
spokesman for the Chandler
family.
/
Feature
Story / • people/otischandler.htm
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