Gleaner’s Walt Dear remembered for his character — and as a character

HENDERSON, Ky. − Walt Dear, the longtime publisher and eventually owner of The Gleaner as well as a civic leader who helped lead multiple fundraising campaigns for local nonprofits, died Friday morning at his home in Durango, Colorado. He was 91.

“He was surrounded by family and died at home,” said his son, Bryan Dear, who survives his father along with sisters Jennie and Elizabeth, spouses, grandchildren and a great-grandchild. The family listed a stroke and dementia as causes of death.

A memorial service is scheduled Wednesday, Aug. 30, at the River Bend Ranch event venue in Durango. There are presently no plans for a service in Henderson.

His children characterized Dear in his obituary as “a dedicated newspaperman who loved music, books, travel, philanthropy, dogs and cats — and, most of all, people.”

Dear was energetic, high-spirited, keenly curious and, to some, more than a little eccentric. He loved to entertain and amuse others.

“He was kind of filled with boundless energy, a force of nature,” John Hodge, a family friend and Dear’s financial advisor who visited him in Durango just weeks ago, said. “It could be overwhelming, but he will be missed.”

During his tenure, The Gleaner was both a very successful business and the best small daily newspaper in the state as evidenced by years of awards, ranging from numerous “General Excellence” first-place awards from the Kentucky Press Association for both news coverage and advertising to an international award for outstanding print quality.

And over a decades-long period, Dear was deeply committed to causes that benefitted Henderson, whether it meant raising millions of dollars for civic projects or reaching out to help an individual in need.

“He was just a fine guy,” Dr. John Logan, who often teamed up with Dear for projects to help the community. “If it was for Henderson, to help Henderson, the answer was yes.

“I can’t say enough good things about Walt. He was the right man for Henderson at the right time.”

The beginnings

Walter Moore Dear II was born on June 26, 1932, in Jersey City, New Jersey, the youngest son of J. Albert Dear II, a second-generation newspaper publisher, and Ella Cyrene Bakke Dear, who years later wrote a weekly column, “Washington Siren,” for the family’s newspapers about activities in the nation’s capital.

Walt Dear graduated from the University of North Carolina, where he majored in modern European history and was editor of the Daily Tar Heel student newspaper. He served three years in the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant, then spent a year of graduate study in Sweden before entering the family business: newspapering.

Dear’s grandfather, Joseph A. Dear Sr., propelled the family into that business in 1868 when he purchased an interest in The Jersey Journal in Jersey City; he gained full control of it in 1907. A year later, he died, and ownership went to his sons Joseph and Walter M. Dear (Walt Dear’s uncle and namesake). They began selling interests in the Journal in 1945 to newspaper and media baron Samuel I. Newhouse Sr., who eventually acquired full ownership.

Dear’s father remained active in journalism, forming Dear Publication & Radio in 1947 and acquiring several small daily newspapers and a radio station. In 1955, Dear Publication leased the Gleaner and Journal in Henderson; it bought the newspaper in 1957.

Meanwhile, in his first job in journalism, Dear worked at the family newspaper in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, serving as president and promotion manager. There he met his future wife, Martha, who was also a journalist; they married in 1958.

Dear Publication & Radio sold the New Kensington Express in 1960; several weeks later, Walt Dear was named promotion manager of Gleaner and Journal Publishing, moving to Henderson with his wife and infant son, Bryan. He would go on to be named president of the company and, in 1963, editor of the Gleaner and Journal.

“I believe that a newspaper’s first duty is to serve its readers,” he declared at the time, pledging to continue publishing columns by local writers such as George Whittington and Annette Brown, a Black educator.

He would relinquish the role of editor to become publisher of the newspaper and oversee it entering a modern era. He oversaw the move of The Gleaner from an aging building at 216-218 N. Elm St. to a modern plant on Klutey Park Plaza in 1976 that within a few years would enter the computer era.

In 1986, Walt and Martha Dear and their three children bought The Gleaner (along with four weekly newspapers, Audubon Printers and a radio station in Franklin, Kentucky) from Dear Publications and Radio.

“He loved that newspaper, but he loved Henderson” and gave both time and treasure to the community, Logan said.

Giving back to Henderson

Dear chaired two record-breaking United Way drives as well as the Salvation Army Center of Hope campaign, the Henderson Community College fine arts center building drive and a crucial early fundraising drive for the Henderson Area Economic Development Council.

Dear was the catalyst for the Friends of Audubon Park organization, which helped win $2.2 million in state funding for improvements to the Audubon State Park museum and a new nature center.

He was instrumental in the fund drive to build the Henderson County Family YMCA on Klutey Park Plaza and remained a major benefactor. The early years at the new Y were challenging financially.

The monthly utility bill at the old YMCA at Third and Main streets, Logan said, was just $300. “The first utility bill (at the Klutey building) was $2,500,” he said. “We didn’t have a dime in the bank. He (Dear) and Leo King and I would get together between Christmas and New Year’s and balance the budget.”

Dear helped raise funds for computers for local schools when computers were a fairly new thing. He was instrumental in the formation of the Ellis Park Foundation to benefit area charitable causes.

He served as chairman, president or a board member for numerous organizations: the college foundation, the hospital foundation, the YMCA, the tourist commission, the industrial foundation, the arts council. In 1976, he chaired the bicentennial celebration here; in 1997, he chaired a riverfront redevelopment committee. He and his family endowed a scholarship program at Western Kentucky University for needy minority students.

“Anything you wanted do in Henderson, he would do it,” Logan said.

Dear also helped and comforted individuals — making bedside visits to the dying, reading to youngsters at the library, helping employees who had problems with alcohol or other troubles.

Connie Walaskay is the daughter of Dear’s late friend Ray Preston. Her son, David, suffered a life-changing injury in a high school football game years ago. “When our son got hurt, Walter came by the house a lot,” she said. “One time he brought an abacus. I couldn’t even pronounce it. But David’s mathematic ability just tripled.” Dear also organized a group of people to visit David on a regular basis.

Walt Dear’s contributions to community life didn’t go unnoticed. In 1992, he was named the Henderson Chamber of Commerce’s Distinguished Citizen of the Year. Presenter Ron Sheffer praised him as a man “who has contributed as much to the soul of this community as anyone who ever lived here.”

“For 30 years, he has been a builder of a better life for the community,” Sheffer said. “Nobody has any greater sense of community … for he truly loves Henderson.”

In accepting the award, The Gleaner said Dear was “uncharacteristically concise,” saying simply: “It’s great to be a Hendersonian. I appreciate it.”

On to retirement

In 1997, Dear sold The Gleaner along with seven weekly newspapers, three printing companies and a radio station to Dallas-based A.H. Belo Corp., publisher of The Dallas Morning News.

“When he sold the newspaper, it was the No. 1 best time to ever sell a newspaper,” said Steve Austin, who worked for Dear since the early 1960s, eventually becoming his general manager and then the publisher of The Gleaner. “If he waited two years more, he would have lost 20% to 25% on the sale.”

That timing was partly good luck, partly Martha Dear urging Walt to retire and enjoy life, Austin said. But Dear also had a good knack for business.

“He could see it coming, I think,” Austin said of the precipitous drop in business that has devastated newspapers since the internet disrupted advertising and the concept of paying for news.

In a column at the time, longtime editor Ron Jenkins praised Dear’s leadership over the decades. “It’s fair to say that, on several occasions during those years, The Gleaner found itself in the eye of the storm. In each case, Walt has remained true to his profession, refusing to compromise the integrity of the newspaper, no matter the pressure from powerful institutions or individuals.”

At age 68, Walt moved with Martha to Durango, Colorado, to be near two of their three children. After Martha died of breast cancer in 2007, he created a cancer research chair at the University of Colorado, Denver, in her honor. They had been married 46 years.

During his more than 20 years in Durango, he became part of community life there — contributing to causes, becoming a member of a so-called “geezer” group and helping sponsor concerts.

‘He was a doozy’

If all Walt Dear did was run a successful newspaper and give back volumes to his community, he would be deserving of praise. But his personality made him unforgettable. He was colorful, even mercurial.

Austin said he was 19 years old when he and Dear each played on volleyball teams at the old downtown YMCA in the early 1960s and Dear hired him based on a single question: “Do you know how to type?” A night job typing up ballgame scores called in by correspondents in Union and Webster counties led to a nearly half-century career for Austin at The Gleaner that eventually included running its day-to-day business and making strategic recommendations, such as to buy a newspaper in Benton, Kentucky that had a color printing press that would go on to generate $2 million of revenue per year for Dear’s company.

“He was a different thinker,” Scott Davis, chairman and CEO of Field & Main Bank, said of Dear. “He just looked at things differently. He had that uncanny ability to see a different perspective. It made him a good newspaper man as well. He wasn’t afraid to challenge the status quo.”

“Definitely a unique individual with many, many talents,” said David Dixon, who served as managing editor for The Gleaner for about 20 years while Dear was at the helm. “He was a doozy. He had a very inquisitive mind. He’d come into the newsroom and ask questions that had never occurred to you before.”

In about 1980, when Chuck and Donna Stinnett were young reporters at The Gleaner, Walt invited them to come to his home on Horseshoe Drive for dinner with he and his wife, Martha. There had been some polite pre-dinner conversation in the living room when Dear suddenly leapt to his feet, scurried over to his World Book encyclopedias and pulled out the “F” volume.

“Let’s learn everything there is to know about Millard Fillmore!” he declared, apropos of nothing.

To be sure, Dear was endlessly curious, including about the state of affairs in his adopted hometown of Henderson. One anecdote recalls the time he was filling his car at a self-service station when, probably bored and impatient, he popped over to the other side of the gas pump to ask another motorist, a complete stranger, “What do you think about our community college?”

“I was always fascinated by his breadth of interest,” Davis said. “Even after he moved to Colorado, he’d call me — it might only be 15 minutes, just 10 minutes — he’d come up with a hundred different things to talk about: Rails-to-trails. What’s being done with the riverfront? What’s going on with the Preston Foundation and how’s the bank doing? It was really something.”

David Thompson, the retired longtime executive director of the Kentucky Press Association, recalled a not-untypical first encounter with Dear.

“As for Walt, my first introduction to him was during a KPA Summer Convention at Kentucky Dam Village State Park,” Thompson recalled in 2019. “During some down time one afternoon, Walt went fishing, one of his favorite hobbies. That evening, as others were in the dining room beginning their meal, this vociferous individual walked in, told the waitress he wanted to see the chef immediately. A large bass in tow, Walt marched right into the kitchen, told the chef to clean and filet the fish and fix that for him for supper.”

The Dear family was active in the Presbyterian Church of Henderson. There, according to the obituary his family prepared, he “alternated singing boisterously with dozing in the pew.”

In retirement, he made a new home in Durango. On his trip to see Dear a few weeks ago, John Hodge said he mentioned to some locals that he was visiting a friend. Who, they asked. Hodge shrugged and told them.

“Oh, Walt Dear! He’s a legend in Durango,” he was promptly told.

“He left an impression wherever he went,” Hodge observed.

Walt the entertainer

Walt Dear loved to entertain people. He began playing the piano at age eight, the start of a lifelong passion. Visitors to his home were frequently treated to spirited performances of him tickling the ivories. During the 1990s, when the Dave and Connie Walaskay owned and operated Planters Coffee House on Main Street, he would come by about once a month to play an upright piano to entertain customers.

“Oh, he was talented,” Connie Walaskay said.

Walt and Martha started a family tradition of an annual Christmas caroling party, with him at the piano; his children recalled him singing with their miniature schnauzer, Rita, “howling along from his lap.” That caroling tradition, they said, continued into his 90s.

“One time, I don’t know if it was a holiday, he called me from Colorado and played the piano over the phone for me,” Austin said. “Anytime he could do it in front of people, you could bet your butt he was going to do it!”

At the annual three-week-long Music in the Mountains concert series in Durango for which he was a major sponsor, Dear each year would sit at a piano dressed formally in red sports jacket and a bow tie to perform a couple of songs.

He didn’t mind being a comic figure. One old photo showed Dear posed in front of the Audubon State Park museum with binoculars in hand and dressed in hiking shorts and knee-high socks, scanning the skies for birds, seemingly oblivious to four geese (actually, decoys) right at his feet. In another, he performed on stage, vaudeville-style, in a garish striped jacket and straw hat, his head thrown back as he crooned some song.

One Halloween, Walt and Martha Dear recreated the nursery rhyme “Three Blind Mice,” with Walt in the role of a rodent and Martha, in a gray wig, as the farmer’s wife chasing him with a carving knife down Main Street in Henderson. The stunt brought a crowd into Planter’s Coffee House, a favorite haunt of the Dears.

Connie Walaskay has photos of Dear dancing enthusiastically at Planters with a white-haired Marty Branaman, a family friend and wife of a well-known attorney here, and him and Martha belting out a song at the restaurant. Could Martha sing, too?

“It didn’t matter,” Walaskay said. “He could.”

A physical life

Dear led a vigorous lifestyle throughout his life. He jogged and biked. When he played racquetball at the YMCA, it was a contact sport; he defended his space on the court like an NBA power forward.

Like his mother, he swam into his 90s. Dear biked the mountainous Iron Horse Bicycle Classic in Durango twice in his 70s, according to his family. He climbed the 14,058-foot Handies Peak in the San Juan Mountains at age 78.

And a long life

Walt Dear came to Henderson with nearly a century of printer’s ink in his family’s veins. He arrived as an outsider, a Jersey kid by way of North Carolina and the U.S. Navy, but soon wove himself into the fabric of Henderson community life. He was confounding but also came to be beloved. He made life interesting.

“I loved working for Walt Dear,” Dixon said.

“A peculiar fellow but a very good-hearted fellow,” Austin, his longtime second-in-command, said. “He liked people and liked to talk to people and he liked his agencies he worked with.”

“Walt was a wonderful guy,” Logan said.

“He was someone who deserves to be remembered well,” Davis said. “He had a big impact on our community.”

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Gleaner’s Walt Dear remembered for his character — and as a character