David Galloway; Editor Worked at Times Orange County Edition

David Barnes Galloway, a journalist and longtime employee of the Los Angeles Times Orange County Edition, died Saturday morning after a short battle with lung cancer. He was 66.

Galloway, who was born in New Jersey, began working at The Times in 1968 as a copy editor and supervisor of the copy desk and then in 1978 as news editor of the edition.

He and his wife, Nancy Ruth Galloway, lived for the past 25 years in Laguna Beach. Galloway, a fitness buff who loved to jog on the beach, had hiked the Appalachian Trail and was a ham radio hobbyist.

Doctors discovered a tumor in his lungs this summer. Last week, he was admitted to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo, where he died at 3 a.m. Saturday.

“It’s a horrible thing, but it was for the best. He wanted to live life fully and it wasn’t worth it” with the cancer, said his daughter Pamela E. Galloway, who lives in Reno, as she sat in her parents’ home Saturday. “He went peacefully.”

A 1948 graduate of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Galloway served in the Navy and in the Army’s 13th Ranger Information Company.

He began his newspaper career working on a college magazine, then became editor of the Lynchburg (Va.) News and was a correspondent for Time magazine and the Los Angeles Times. For 10 years, he worked at the Imperial Valley Press in El Centro, working his way from city editor to manager of all departments. Before joining The Times, he was publisher of the Daily News-Miner in Fairbanks, Alaska.

In addition to his wife of 41 years, Galloway is survived by his mother, Eilene M. Galloway, of Washington; three children, Christopher Barnes Galloway, of San Juan Capistrano, Pamela E. Galloway and Gillian Q. Galloway, of Portland, Ore.; a brother, Jonathan F. Galloway, of Lake Forest, Ill.; three grandchildren, two nieces and a nephew.

The family will have a memorial service over the Thanksgiving holiday.