James G. Scripps Dies; Head of Two Newspaper Groups, Ex-Navy Officer
James G. Scripps, head of two newspaper groups and grandson of Edward W. Scripps who founded United Press and Scripps-Howard Newspapers, died of an apparent heart attack at his home Saturday. He was 75.
Scripps, whose newspaper career spanned six decades, was board chairman, president and director of Pioneer Newspapers and James G. Scripps Newspapers.
Scripps, born Nov. 24, 1911, in San Diego, held an honorary doctorate degree in humanities from Utah State University in Logan, Utah.
He was a licensed specialist in pyrotechnics and well known for the fireworks displays at his summer home on Charles Island in Washington State’s Puget Sound.
Scripps was skipper of the USS Halloran, a destroyer escort, during World War II, and received a Purple Heart and Silver Star for his actions during an attack on the ship by Japanese planes in the South Pacific.
He retired from the Naval Reserve with the rank of rear admiral.
Scripps is survived by his wife, Marjorie of Del Mar; two daughters, Sally Weston of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., and Susan Wood of Mount Vernon, Wash.; two sisters, Josephine Scripps of San Luis Rey, Calif., and Ellen Browning Davis of San Diego; a brother, Edward, of Charlottesville, Va.; five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
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