Albert W. Bates, Ex-Newspaperman, Dies
Albert W. Bates, former editorial page director of the Orange Coast Daily Pilot and one-time public relations assistant to the U.S. postmaster general, died Saturday in Hemet after a long illness. He was 81.
Bates was with the Daily Pilot from 1961 until 1972, when he joined the U.S. Postal Service during the Nixon Administration. He retired from that post in 1974. He began his newspaper career in the Midwest, and from 1929 to 1934 served as executive director of Sigma Delta Chi, the national journalism society now known as the Society of Professional Journalists. He was one of only two people to twice win the society’s coveted Wells Key for services to journalism and the organization.
Leaving the society in the middle of the Depression, Bates became a public relations consultant for the meat packing firm of Swift and Co. in Chicago. He moved to Honolulu in the late 1940s as a director of public relations for a company there. He later became vice president of Hill and Knowlton publishers in New York.
While with the Daily Pilot, Bates received the California Newspaper Publisher’s Assn. award in 1968 for the best editorial page in California.
He also belonged to the Public Relations Society of America, the National Press Club, Orange County Press Club, Dutch Treat Club-West and the Huntington Beach Rotary Club.
He is survived by his wife, Marianne of Hemet; two daughters, Lynn Bryan of Etna, Calif., and Katheryn Hill of Norfolk, Va.; a son, Albert K. Bates of Summer Town, Tenn., and seven grandchildren.
No funeral services are planned. The family has requested that any memorial contribution be sent to the Ramona Hospice in Hemet.
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