Robert Harley Estabrook

SALISBURY — Robert Harley Estabrook, editor and publisher emeritus of The Lakeville Journal, who had been associated with the newspaper since 1971 following a 25-year career on The Washington Post as an editor and foreign correspondent, died Nov. 15, 2011, at Noble Horizons. He was 93 and was the husband of the late Mary Lou (Stewart) Estabrook, to whom he had been married for 67 years.The son of Christianne (Harley) and Charles Beason Estabrook, he was born in Dayton, Ohio, on Oct. 16, 1918. After attending schools in Newton Center, Mass., and Evanston, Ill., he graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1935. In 1939, he graduated with highest distinction from Northwestern University, where he was managing editor of The Daily Northwestern and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.A youthful interest in journalism led him to start a mimeographed resort weekly at Burt Lake, Mich., where his maternal grandparents had a cottage. While in college, he was offered a summer job as a reporter on a country weekly, The Emmet County Graphic, in Harbor Springs, Mich.After college he was a reporter and later an editorial writer on the Cedar Rapids Gazette in Iowa for three years. In 1942, he volunteered for the U.S. Army, in which he spent four years, rising from private to captain. He established an Army newspaper in Brazil, ending his military service in the Pentagon in Washington. He joined The Washington Post in 1946.In Cedar Rapids, he met Mary Lou Stewart, who was playing flute in the Cedar Rapids Symphony, where he played third trombone. They were married there on Dec. 22, 1942, after he graduated from officer candidate school. At The Washington Post, Bob was an editorial writer for seven years during the Truman and early Eisenhower administrations and the McCarthy era. Promoted to editor of the editorial page in 1953, he wrote extensively about national and world events culminating in the election of John F. Kennedy as president. Responding to a challenge from Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, he joined in hiking most of the length of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal from Cumberland, Md., to Washington in 1954.On a trip around the world in 1957, he interviewed such leaders as Chiang Kai-shek, Ngo Dinh Diem, Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser and David Ben Gurion. He also accompanied President Kennedy’s first Food for Peace Mission to Argentina and Brazil in 1961.As a foreign correspondent based in London from 1961 to 1965, he visited the Soviet Union with the first group of American editors in 1962 and participated in an interview with Nikita Khrushchev. He was one of the first American reporters to visit Angola, and wrote about the war between China and India, French President de Gaulle’s veto of Britain’s bid to join the European Economic Community and Khrushchev’s 1964 visit to Scandinavia. He attended a dinner with the Sheikh of Bahrain and Winston Churchill’s funeral. He visted more than 70 countries on journalistic assignments.He moved with his family to Pelham, N.Y., as a base for covering the United Nations and Canada from 1966 to 1971. In 1970, he made an extensive tour of the Canadian Arctic. He won the New York City Deadline Club award for United Nations reporting.In December 1970, Bob and Mary Lou purchased The Lakeville Journal, which had been published by Ann and Stewart Hoskins for 31 years. They bought The Millerton News in 1972.Bob was proudest of The Journal’s role in the Peter Reilly case in which news stories and editorials illuminated the way in which state police had elicited a false confession from an 18-year-old Housatonic Valley Regional High School student about the murder of his mother, Barbara Gibbons. By vote of 325 editors across the country, Bob received the John Peter Zenger Freedom of the Press Award from the University of Arizona. An editorial also won the Golden Quill Award of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors.In a bit of whimsy, the Salisbury selectmen in 1973 appointed Bob a town perambulator, to hike the bounds of the town with the implicit duty of making sure there had been no aggression from Massachusetts or New York. Bob used this as poetic license to write about whatever he pleased in his weekly column, Perambulating.At the close of 1986, Bob and Mary Lou, aged 68 and 66 respectively, sold The Lakeville Journal and Millerton News to Robert A. Hatch. Health problems and economic difficulties compelled Hatch to sell the papers in 1995 to a group of local investors headed by William E. Little Jr. and A. Whitney Ellsworth.Bob was invited to serve on the executive committee, and continued to do so until his death. His book chronicling his journalistic career, “Never Dull: From Washington Editor and Foreign Correspondent to Country Publisher,” appeared in 2005.Bob and Mary Lou camped extensively with their children during vacations, visiting all 48 continental states. They had a cabin cruiser on Long Island Sound for many years and in 1970 took it as far as Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. After their retirement they made many trips abroad and traveled widely in their van camper. They drove to Alaska and the Northwest Territories twice and also visited Newfoundland and Labrador.Bob was an active member of the Salisbury Rotary Club for more than 35 years. He was active as a lecturer and student in the Taconic Learning Center. For more than 25 years he played baritone horn in the Salisbury Band. He also sang bass in the HousaTonics Barbershop Chorus.At the state and regional level Bob worked with a group of news executives and Connecticut Gov. Ella Grasso to persuade the General Assembly to pass the Freedom of Information Act in 1975. He was a past chairman and later executive secretary of the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information and was a founder of the Connecticut Foundation for Open Government.He was a past president of the New England Press Association and a recipient of its Horace Greeley Award. He received the Yankee Quill Award of the New England Society of Professional Journalists. He was a past president of the Connecticut Editorial Association and recipient of its Herbert Brucker Award.He also was a past president of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors and a recipient of its Eugene Cervi Award for journalistic courage.He was a founder and past chairman of the National Conference of Editorial Writers. He won the Society of Professional Journalists national award for the best editorial in 1953. He had been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1959 and was a Pulitzer Prize juror in 1987 and 1988. He also was a fellow of Phi Beta Kappa.For many years he served on the committee that selected the Elijah Parrish Lovejoy Fellow at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Colby awarded him an honorary doctor of humane letters degree in 1972.He was a founding member of the Unitarian Church of Arlington, Va., and of the Unitarian Fellowship of Northwest Connecticut.His wife, Mary Lou, died on May 3, 2010. He is survived by three sons, John Estabrook of East Canaan and his wife, Linda, James Estabrook of Herndon, Va., and his wife, Kathleen, and David Estabrook of Philadelphia, Pa.; a daughter, Margaret Harley Carroll of Lynnfield, Mass., and her husband, William; three granddaughters, Dr. Harley Simeone of Newton, Mass., Abigail Carroll of Lynnfield and Kimberly Estabrook of Herndon; a grandson, W. Patrick Carroll of Sudbury, Mass.; a great-grandson, Benjamin Charles Simeone of Newton, Mass.; and two nephews, Dr. Thomas Estabrook of Somerville, Mass., and Dr. Charles Estabrook of Alexandria, Va.Memorial services will be announced at a later date. Arrangements are under the care of the Newkirk- Palmer Funeral Home in North Canaan.A memorial service for Bob will be held Dec. 10, 2011, at 1 p.m. at the Salisbury Congregational Church. Memorial donations may be sent to the Noble Horizons Auxiliary or the Salisbury Visiting Nurse Association.