Curtis J. Sitomer; Reporter and Editor

Curtis J. Sitomer, 60, a reporter, Western bureau chief and former managing editor of the Christian Science Monitor. Sitomer joined the Monitor in 1965 in Los Angeles and was later named the newspaper’s Western bureau chief. He was national news editor from 1976 to 1981, special sections editor beginning in 1983 and managing editor from December, 1988, until he retired in September, 1990. Sitomer later served as manager of the press relations and legal affairs department of the Christian Science Church. While stationed in Los Angeles, Sitomer covered the governorship of Ronald Reagan, the 1965 Watts riots and the Pentagon Papers trial in 1973. Sitomer won the Odyssey House national prize for his work on children’s rights, American Bar Assn. citations for his coverage of adoption and the Pentagon Papers, and the American Civil Liberties Union Prize for a series on California farm labor. His “Justice” column in the Monitor earned Sitomer a column-of-the-year award from the National Headliner Club in 1986. In Brookline, Mass., on Monday of unreported causes.