The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 3

Former Philadelphia Inquirer editor, Guthman, dies

Ed Guthman, who died Sunday, Aug. 31, at age 89, had been tested in battle by the time he became editorial page editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Guthman had been a platoon leader in a reconnaissance regiment in North Africa and Italy during World War II and was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. But his most vivid war stories were about the civil rights movement.

As a member of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's staff, Guthman was at the University of Mississippi in 1962 when James Meredith attempted to integrate the school. "It's getting like the Alamo," Guthman told his boss by telephone in describing the bloody rioting.

The newspaperman had won a Pulitzer Prize at the Seattle Times in 1950 for proving the McCarthy anticommunism committee was railroading a University of Washington professor. He returned to journalism in 1965, becoming an editor for the Los Angeles Times. The Times' coverage of the Watergate break-in in 1972 put Guthman on Richard Nixon's enemies' list.

He came to The Inquirer in 1977, and for 10 years led the editorial board as it argued its way to consensus on the most important issues facing Philadelphia and the nation. Guthman is remembered as a guiding force who was never abrasive, always respectful of a contrary point of view, forever raising questions to make sure an ultimate position was clearly understood.

Guthman, who for years suffered from amyloidosis, never lost his positive spirit that inspired others to press for a world where people looked out for each other. He certainly did.

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