Barry Bingham Sr., Media Patriarch in South, Dies

Barry Bingham Sr., who headed one of America’s great 20th-Century media dynasties that included the Louisville Courier-Journal and then disbanded it when his children started feuding, died today at his home. He was 82.

Bingham, a one-time power in Southern Democratic politics, had been suffering from a brain tumor that was diagnosed late last year. The diagnosis focused national attention on the protracted feud between his children that led the patrician publisher to sell the media empire, the base of the family fortune for more than six decades.

Despite wealth, power and stature as patriarch of Kentucky’s leading family, Bingham’s life was punctuated with tragedy.

The Bingham-owned media empire broke apart in 1986 and was sold to outsiders for an estimated $443 million after his three children turned against one another and their parents in a bitter struggle.

The disposal of the morning Courier-Journal, the afternoon Louisville Times, a television station and two radio stations, a printing company and a database firm marked the end of one of the nation’s last major family-run regional media companies.

The acrimony also focused attention on the disputed inheritance with which Bingham’s father bought the papers seven decades ago and on the freak accidents in which two Bingham sons were killed in the mid-1960s.

Bingham used his newspapers to advocate liberal causes in his native South. He was a force in American journalism and the Democratic Party for four decades and headed the Marshall Plan in France after World War II.

Intimate of Royalty

He was an aristocratic intimate of British royalty and political luminaries such as Adlai E. Stevenson and John F. Kennedy, and was honored by Britain and France for service to the two nations.

George Barry Bingham was born in Louisville on Feb. 10, 1906, youngest child of Robert Worth Bingham, a lawyer who was mayor and judge in Kentucky’s largest city.

Robert Bingham became a national celebrity after his second marriage in 1916 to Mary Flagler, widow of Florida tycoon Henry Flagler and reputedly the richest woman in America. Her death the next year triggered scandal after her husband produced a codicil to her will which left him $5 million.

Legal Challenge Dropped

A legal challenge to the bequest was filed but ultimately dropped.

When Robert Bingham died in 1937, Barry Bingham inherited the company and Melcombe, the 40-acre family estate on a bluff overlooking the Ohio River.

At the height of its power and influence, the Bingham family was devastated in 1964 by the accidental electrocution of youngest son, Jonathan, and in 1966 when eldest son and heir-apparent, Worth, was killed in a car accident.

Barry Bingham then groomed second son Barry Jr. as his successor and turned over the publisher’s reins to him in the early 1970s. But he retained ultimate control of the family business even though stock ownership was dispersed among his children and grandchildren.

Rancorous Dispute

His retirement was marred by a rancorous family dispute when daughter Sallie, a committed feminist, sought to sell her stock to outsiders after a prolonged battle with Barry Jr.

The feud attracted national attention and the Courier-Journal was eventually sold in 1986 to Gannett Co. Inc. after Barry Jr. refused to meet his sister’s price for her stock. The junior Bingham denounced his father’s sale decision as a “betrayal.”

Barry Bingham Sr. and his wife received an estimated $105 million from the sale of their businesses and, after taxes, spent much of their time giving away money to various philanthropic causes.