Walter Mears
Walter Robert Mears (January 11, 1935 – March 3, 2022) was an American journalist, author, and educator. Mears worked for the Associated Press (AP) from 1956 until his retirement in 2001. In 1977, he won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his coverage of the 1976 United States presidential election. After retirement, he taught journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University.
Walter Mears
January 11, 1935
March 3, 2022 (aged 87)
Journalist
1956–2001
- Sally Danton (died 1962)
- Joyce Lund (divorced)
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Carroll Ann Rambo(m. 1986, divorced)
-
Frances Richardson(m. 1997; died 2019)
4
Early life and education[edit]
Mears was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, on January 11, 1935, and raised in Lexington.[1][2] He graduated in 1956 from Middlebury College, where he was editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, the Campus, later referring to his four years of work with the paper as his "journalism school".[3][4]
Honors[edit]
In addition to the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting,[7] Mears won several awards over the course of his career. From the AP, he won the Managing Editors Association's Top Performance Award in 1973, and the Robert R. Eunson Distinguished Journalist Award in 1986.[3] The AP also awarded him a membership to the Burning Tree Club following his Pulizer Prize win.[11] Middlebury College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Letters in 1977 and the Alumni Award in 2011; he served on the Board of Trustees from 1980 to 1984.[3]
Personal life[edit]
Mears was married four times. His first wife, Sally Danton, and their two children died in a house fire on December 24, 1962.[2][5][8] He and his second wife, Joyce Lund Mears, a former reporter, had two daughters; the couple later divorced.[2][19] He and Carroll Ann Rambo Mears, a producer for NBC News, married in 1986;[20] that marriage also ended in divorce.[19] He met AP journalist Frances Richardson in 1994, and they married in 1997.[21] Following Mears' retirement in 2001, the couple moved to Arlington County, Virginia. After his book Deadlines Past was published, they left the Washington area in 2005 and moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where they lived in Governors Club, a private community.[10] Frances Mears died in 2019.[21]
Mears died from cancer at his home in Chapel Hill on March 3, 2022, at the age of 87.[2][8][19]