Category: 1950s

Betty Louise Pinney Laramore died at age 93 on September 29, 2022, at Otterbein Franklin Senior Living Community, where she had resided for nine years.

She was born April 19, 1929, in South Bend to Carroll L. and Nettie Mitzner Pinney. She graduated from Riley High School and attended Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. While in high school, and for a year after graduation, she worked in the editorial department of the South Bend Tribune.

On June 25, 1950, in South Bend she married William F. Laramore and moved into the house on Ferndale Street in Plymouth the couple had built before they were married and where she lived for 63 years. She spent more than 30 years working at Bosworth’s, the retail store founded in 1891 by her husband’s grandfather, retiring as merchandise manager in 1983. Bosworth’s was an important business in Marshall County for nine decades, and Bill and Betty Lou were devoted to customer service and caring for their employees. Betty Lou personally ensured that dozens of Marshall County brides had perfect weddings, and she supervised the fashion review at the county 4-H fair for decades. Bosworth’s pioneered providing medical insurance to its employees.

Survivors include her son Jon (Janet McCabe), son-in-law Randolph Johns, grandchildren Alice Laramore (Adam Paltrineri) of Boston, MA, Dan Sheehan (Bri Booram) and Peter Laramore, both of Indianapolis, great-grandchildren Remy Laramore and Jack Paltrineri, five nieces and three nephews. She was preceded in death by her husband, daughter Ann Laramore Johns, brothers Wilbur and Donald Pinney, sister Leah Collins Heiderich, and in-laws George and Jean Schricker. She loved hosting family meals featuring produce from her garden.

Betty Lou was devoted to helping people and making Plymouth a better community. She was a founding director and first secretary of the Marshall County Community Foundation, actively involved in raising more than three million dollars to match the initial Lilly Foundation grant. She co-chaired the drive to raise a million dollars for the new Holy Cross Parkview Hospital (now St. Joseph Health System Plymouth Medical Center). She was an active member of First United Methodist Church and its choir and co-chaired the 1998 drive that raised more than $600,000 to renovate the sanctuary building.

As a community leader, at various times she served as president of the Board of Trustees of the Plymouth Community School Corp., Indiana Public Television Society, Ancilla College Board of Directors, PIDCO, Holy Cross Parkview Hospital Auxiliary, and the local United Way and Tri Kappa active and associate chapters, often the first woman board president. She was a director of United Telephone Company of Indiana (now CenturyLink), Holy Cross Parkview Hospital, St Joseph’s Care Foundation, Plymouth Community Improvement Commission, and the Indiana Medical and Nursing Distribution Loan Fund.

For ten years she was a member of the board of Michiana Public Broadcasting Corp., which manages WNIT television, and in 1992 was named Outstanding Auction Volunteer. In 2007 she was honored by the WNIT board of directors for more than 20 years of “exceptional service to the station.” She produced the Politically Speaking program on WNIT for several years. The National Friends of Public Broadcasting honored her with the Elaine Peterson Special Achievement Award in 1995.

With her husband, she received the Plymouth Jaycees Distinguished Citizen Award in 1972, the Ancilla College Distinguished Service Award in 1983, the Community Spirit Award given by then-St. Joseph Regional Medical Center Plymouth in 2003; and the Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce Distinguished Citizen Award in 2005. She was honored by Gov. Joseph E. Kernan as a Sagamore of the Wabash in 2004.

Visitation will be held on Thursday, October 6, 2022 from 12-2 pm at the Johnson-Danielson Funeral Home, 1100 N. Michigan Street, Plymouth. Funeral services will immediately follow with Pastor Lauren Hall officiating.

Burial will be in the New Oak Hill Cemetery, Plymouth.

In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts may be made to First United Methodist Church, c/o Marshall County Community Foundation, P.O. Box 716, Plymouth, IN 46563 or United Way of Marshall County, P.O. Box 392, Plymouth, IN 46563.

cache.legacy.net

Mark Bates completed his Christian tour of duty on earth peacefully on September 19, 2022.

Mark was born on August 14, 1934, in Bloomington, Illinois to Ralph E. and Margaret “Porgie” B. (nee Weldon) Bates.

He was an alumnus of St. Athanasius School and St. George High School in Evanston, IL He graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism in 1956

Mark married the love of his life Janet (nee Fjellberg) on January 5, 1957. They had a glorious life together until Janet’s passing on July 28, 2017. Mark is survived by his children, Mike (Sue), Scott, and Anne Glassow (Marcus).

He is also survived by nine grandchildren: Tom Bates, Betsy (Chris Stevens), Andy Bates (Hanna), Emily Bates (Andy Berlein), Laura Bates, Camryn Bates, Marcus Glassow (Adena), Kelsey (Grady Garrison), and Brittany as well as eight great-grandchildren: Michael Bates-McGowan; Daisy and Blake Glassow; Adeline Garrison, Noah Bates, Jack Stevens, Ted Bates, and Ben Stevens, Harlan Berlein. He will be dearly missed and fondly remembered by all.

A memorial service and celebration of Mark’s rich, full life will be held at a later date. Interment at Ridgewood Cemetery in Des Plaines, IL. The Bates family asks that memorial donations be directed to St. Athanasius School, 2510 Ashland Avenue, Evanston, IL 60201.

The Chicago Tribune

Robert “Russ” Bensley finished his final broadcast on August 9, 2022. The oldest (by minutes) child of Robert Daniel Bensley and Sylvia Gates Holton Bensley, Russ is survived by his children Skip Bensley, Robin Arena, and Vicki (Ryan) Stevenson; his grandchildren CJ, Sabrina, Jordan, Sarah, Andrew, and Ryan, as well as his twin brother Edward (Laura) Bensley. He is predeceased by his wife, Patrica Bannon Bensley. Also survived and predeceased by a sea of those who admired and respected him throughout his long career at CBS, as a horse farmer, and as an overall great guy.

Russ grew up on and around the University of Chicago campus, where his grandfather was the head of and his mother professor of Anatomy (and the first female graduate of the University of Chicago Medical School), and his father and aunt were integral to the vast scientific advances made there, particularly in the realm of diabetes research, for which the senior Robert Russell Bensley won a Banting Medal. He graduated from Hyde Park High School and went on to earn both an undergraduate and master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. During his years there, he commuted daily from Hyde Park, as he was also caring for his grandfather.

Russ’ career began in radio, eventually landing him at the WBBM-TV station, where he wrote and anchored the late-night news broadcast. Amusingly, this broadcast was watched by one Pat Bannon while sitting at Wally’s Tap in Homewood; she would meet him in person and then marry him almost 20 years later. Russ made his national news television debut doing “man on the street” interviews following the death of JFK.

The CBS network then brought him to New York, quickly making him a producer (eventually executive) of the Evening News with Walter Cronkite. In 1968 he took a crew to cover the Vietnam war, got shot, and then evacuated to a hospital that was then bombed.

“Not a great day” as he put it.

In 1971, he won the first of four Emmy awards for his work on the groundbreaking documentary, “The World of Charlie Company,” for CBS.

After his time on the evening news, he headed the Special Events Unity, covering events like space shuttle launches, royal weddings, and presidential conventions and elections. He recently told his family he loved special events because he wanted to be where the action was. He was the executive producer of On the Road with Charles Kuralt, which he enjoyed for the interesting and uplifting stories. He also taught journalism courses as a guest teacher in a variety of settings, including Columbia University, New York.

After his retirement from CBS in 1985, he, Pat and daughter Vicki moved to Niles, MI, where they raised Morgan Horses until 2003. When asked about what seemed like a major life change, Russ was frequently known to quip, “It’s just a different kind of manure.” He continued remote work for CBS for almost 3 years, putting together a videocassette series, The Vietnam War with Walter Cronkite.

After horse-farming, he took up his favorite title full-time-Grandpa. Russ and Pat moved to Homewood, IL (where Pat had grown up) in 2003, and he remained there until 2014, when he moved into the home his daughter, Vicki, and husband Ryan built for them. He enjoyed the rest of his years in the “west wing” with Vicki, Ryan, his grandsons Andrew and Ryan, and a variety of cats and dogs whom he adored. His grandsons clearly benefited from his constant presence; both have gone into journalism.

Russ celebrated his 84th birthday by jumping out of a “perfectly good” airplane, handling it like a pro, and at 86 had to have an amputation of his lower leg (unrelated to the jumping out of an airplane) proceeding to put everyone in rehab – including 30-year-olds – to shame. (Upon waking from surgery being asked how he was, he replied, “Footloose and fancy-free.”) He walked at home without so much as a cane, and used a walker only at the annoying insistence of his daughter. Until the stroke that disabled him seven weeks prior to his death, he took daily walks, got his own paper and did the crosswords, all while shaking his head at the changes in TV news.

Russ’ colleagues say he was among the best in the business, and to this day speak with great admiration and affection for him and his work. Giants in the industry have described him as “one of the all-time great television news producers and editors” and “the best newsman television ever had….[and] that for a few years a lot of Americans got their information about what was going on in the world from the honest and direct way [he] chose to tell them.”

Russ’ kind heart was even bigger for animals. If you are inclined to honor him in some way, please make a donation in his name to the South Suburban Humane Society, where many of his beloved pets came from. If you want to honor him another way, sneak some Oreo cookies and perhaps a good, dark beer.

And above all, the family encourages you use the phrase he was famous for as often as you can – “Everything is Going to be All Right.”

legacy.com

Roy Wiley worked in advertising and public relations for more than four decades after starting out in journalism and for many years was the chief spokesman for Navistar, the truck and engine manufacturer.

“He was a very positive, energizing kind of person, and he would hang around often times people half his age, but he had more energy than they did,” said Dan Ustian, a retired chairman and CEO of Navistar. “He knew everybody.”

Wiley, 87, died April 4 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital while recovering from hip surgery, said his wife of 33 years, Bobbie Huskey. He had been a Loop resident.

Born in Chicago and raised on the Northwest Side, Wiley was the son of Charles L. Wiley, who ran unsuccessfully in the 1932 GOP primary for a Northwest Side congressional district.

Wiley attended Onarga Military Academy in downstate Onarga for high school, then attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism for two years.

In 1952, while at Northwestern, Wiley was hired as an apprentice copy clerk at the Chicago Sun-Times. He was promoted to full-time general assignment reporter two years later, and later was the paper’s auto editor, a marketing and stock market columnist and finally, the paper’s assistant financial editor, overseeing a staff of 10.

“As a metro reporter in Chicago, back in the day, he’d witnessed some harsh things, but he nonetheless loved the city deeply despite its flaws,” said former Tribune reporter James P. Miller, a longtime friend. “Roy also loved newspapering — the action and the deadlines.”

In the early 1960s, Wiley also was editor of Glenview-based Automotive Fleet magazine, a publication devoted exclusively to passenger car fleets owned or leased by industry and government.

In 1968, Wiley left the Sun-Times to take a job in public relations as a vice president at the Financial Relations Board, a financial communications agency. Wiley remained there until 1972, when he and a colleague cofounded OSLA Communications, a public relations firm that was an offshoot of Olympic Savings & Loan Association.

Wiley later was director of communications at advertising agency Weber, Cohn and Riley before signing on with the Ogilvy & Mather public relations firm in 1982.

In the early 1990s, Wiley managed media relations for clients involved in hostile merger-and-acquisition activity. Miller, then a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, recalled Wiley’s forthrightness and graciousness amid at-times contentious dealings between companies.

“M&A … isn’t rocket science, but it is precision work because a lot of money is riding on the outcome, and tiny signals can swing the price of the target company’s shares, and both sides can be tempted to sling mud at the other,” Miller said. “Not Roy Wiley, though, ever, in my experience, over decades of interactions with the guy. In a hardball business, he was old-school — somebody whose word was always, always good.”

In 1996, Wiley joined public relations firm Hill & Knowlton.

“You could always count on Roy to have that skeptical journalist’s eye on things,” said Hud Englehart, who worked with Wiley at Hill & Knowlton. “He always knew what questions to ask or what the most insightful questions were that got us to a core insight into the community and as well into clients.”

In 1998, Navistar hired Wiley as director of communications. At Navistar, he was known for insisting on only using the stairs in the company’s Warrenville headquarters, as a way to stay fit.

“We had five floors there, and one meeting might be on the first floor and the next meeting would be on the fifth floor, and some of the people would be going to both meetings, and Roy would say, ‘Let’s walk,’ ” Ustian said. “So Roy would walk up five flights of stairs, and the young guys (with him) would be the ones that were tired.”

Wiley retired from Navistar in 2011, at age 76.

Wiley and his wife renovated a vintage home in Lakeview before moving to a Loop high-rise, where their neighbors included former TV reporter and Better Government Association Executive Director Andy Shaw.

“My first thought was that this is one fashionable octogenarian,” Shaw recalled. “He was still as stylish, sophisticated and urbane as he had been throughout his distinguished career — a true boulevardier.”

Two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his wife, Wiley is survived by a son, Roy; a daughter, Cindy Wiley Hindel; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. Another son, Todd, died in 2018.

Source: Chicago Tribune