Lancaster New Era, Oct. 9

Cherry, editor of Lancaster New Era for 28 years, dies at age 86

By CINDY STAUFFER, Staff
Lancaster New Era

Daniel L. Cherry, the retired Lancaster New Era editor whose tenure spanned the computerization of the newsroom, Lancaster's rapid suburban growth and the Cold War's approaching end, died Oct. 8 at his city home. He was 86.

A journalist for four decades, Cherry was the seventh editor of the New Era, serving from 1959 to 1986.

A family spokesman said he had Parkinson's disease. He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Shirley Cutler Cherry, three children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Cherry was a forceful, opinionated man who witnessed great changes at the helm of a local newspaper.

"He was an editor in a time when journalism changed from manual typewriters and horse-and-buggy journalism into modern, enterprise, aggressive journalism," said Robert J. Kozak, a former New Era editor.

Cherry started working as a reporter in the era of "Front Page"-style newsrooms, when reporters with cigarettes hanging from their lips banged away on noisy typewriters, tossing crumpled drafts of their stories over their shoulders and grinding out their cigarettes on the greasy, wooden floor of an office overlooking West King Street.

When he walked out of his office for the final time, his belongings packed into a cardboard box tucked under his arm, the modernized newsroom was a place of glowing computers, with cell phones and fax machines just over the horizon.

This is how the late Richard Snyder, a former state senator and New Era columnist, summed up Cherry's career in a 1987 column:

"Events in his 28 years embraced such diverse happenings as Hawaii's statehood, the Berlin Wall, 'Op' art, color TV, hurricanes, streaking, gasoline shortages, assassinations of three national figures, the near assassinations of two presidents and the Pope, campus riots, 'Jaws,' 'Roots,' Vietnam, Watergate, satellites, nuclear subs circling the world, and moon landings.

"The period saw the growth of feminism and the public acceptance of trousers for women. It witnessed ascent of four women as national leaders. It witnessed Gandhi in India, Meir in Israel, Thatcher in Great Britain and Aquino in the Philippines."

Cherry had a front seat to it all, scribbling notes to reporters in his signature green felt-tipped pen and writing out countless editorials in longhand on a yellow legal pad.

Staffers remember him as a tough but fair man, known for his lectures to cub reporters about being a good listener but not a "shrinking violet."

Woe to the reporter whose writing was not precise or descriptive enough for Cherry.

"He had an expression that I loved and still use: That's a bunch of words strung together that say nothing," said Gordon Freireich, who worked as an editor under Cherry from 1965 to 1980.

Harold E. Miller, president and chief executive officer of Lancaster Newspapers, remembered Cherry as having the "lasting reputation of being a tough, no-nonsense journalist."

"In Dan's world, nothing was overlooked or left to supposition. He always had his own opinion and he wasn't shy about taking stands on issues that affected his readers. He liked to debate everything."

Cherry urged his staff to take the same approach to newspapering, Miller said.

A native of Philadelphia, Cherry came to the New Era in 1948, after graduating from Penn State University.

He attended the university on the GI bill after serving as an Army Air Force fighter pilot in World War II, an experience that shaped his newsroom days.

Cherry, a squadron commander, was shot down in the Pacific and rescued by a U.S. ship.

"When the ship was coming toward him, he didn't know if it was American or Japanese, and his best friend had been beheaded earlier in a concentration camp in the Philippines," his son, Steve, recalled.

"He was a 20-year-old kid," his son said. "His toughness you saw in his job was really created there — that idea that nothing is as bad as what I've seen over there, so I can do anything."

Cherry covered courts and police news at first at the New Era, helping to cover the locally famous trial of Edward L. Gibbs, a Franklin & Marshall College senior convicted and later executed for the 1950 murder of college stenographer Marian Louise Baker.

"He was a very hardworking, assiduous reporter," recalls Gerald Lestz, a former editorial page editor and Scribbler columnist. "He knew what he wanted and tried to get it."

Cherry was a wire editor and city editor before his appointment as editor in 1959.

"He brought a fresh air into the New Era," Lestz said.

Cherry improved writing, gave a new emphasis to photographs and supported local features. He also supported enterprise reporting, encouraging reporters to dig through records, travel places and study issues in depth.

It was Cherry who sent a reporter and photographer up in a helicopter to get the story and photos of a 1958 blizzard that closed the Pennsylvania Turnpike and who oversaw the production of a very unusual New Era extra edition when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

Sometimes he took matters into his own hands.

In the past, the New Era regularly covered the national conventions of political parties, and Cherry sometimes accompanied reporters. At a Republican convention in the 1960s, he and the late reporter Jack Moore got wind that the Pennsylvania delegation was going to hold a closed-door meeting.

"Dan hated closed-door meetings," Kozak recalled, "especially where he thought public information should be getting out."

Cherry and Moore discovered where the meeting was going to be held, went to the room and hid behind some curtains to hear what was going on, before they were discovered and summarily tossed out.

During his career, Cherry was a tireless booster of downtown Lancaster and the local arts scene. A member of the Lancaster Sertoma, he played a role in the construction of the Long's Park Amphitheater and was active with the Lancaster Symphony. He also was active with professional organizations, serving as president of the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors Association.

When he retired, Cherry said, "It's vital the newspaper play a role in the development of a community ... It should support good things. It should and must attack bad things. It should stand for something."

He was not concerned if that stand was unpopular, colleagues said.

New Era editor Ernest Schreiber said today, "He once told me that by the end of his career, a good editor had few friends left. It was a poignant comment from a man who had the respect of far more than he knew."

At home Cherry had a different manner than he had at work, his son said.

"As a father, the way he was a newspaper editor wasn't in play at all. He was kind and gentle and sweet," Steve Cherry remembered. "He would come home from work, just frazzled from pressures of the day at the desk, pick up a baseball glove and ball and start throwing ball."

Staff members recall parties hosted by the Cherrys at their homes on State Street and later on East Orange Street, one in particular that featured bartending by then F&M student Treat Williams, who went onto an acting career onstage and in Hollywood.

In addition to his wife and son Steve, Cherry is survived by a daughter, Paula Newton, of Westbrook, Conn.; and son Daniel, of Nahant, Mass.

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