Bill Billiter; Award-Winning Reporter

Bill Billiter, an award-winning reporter and editor for The Times Orange County Edition, died of an apparent heart attack Saturday while returning home from running in the annual UC Irvine Zot Trot 5-kilometer race. He was 62.

Billiter was born and raised in the flatlands of western Kentucky but came to personify the prototypical California male, his daughter, Mary Billiter Thomas, said. Tanned, a competitive runner and something of a sun worshiper, he took to his adoptive home with the fervor of a native.

“He epitomized the California male, and he prided himself on that,” Thomas said.

That personal embrace of California, she believes, helped establish his career over nearly 20 years as a reporter and editor for The Times.

“Bill was a talented journalist, but more than that he was a wonderful man,” said William Nottingham, editor of The Times Orange County Edition. “Our newsroom will greatly miss the flashing eyes, bright smile and hearty hello he brought along whenever he walked through the door.

“He cared deeply about the people and communities he covered during his distinguished career here. Journalism in the public’s interest was his daily mission.”

Billiter died Saturday morning while driving along the Costa Mesa Freeway after competing in the 5-K race in Irvine, Thomas said.

Details on the incident were not immediately available from the California Highway Patrol. A spokesman for the Orange County coroner’s office said it appeared that Billiter fell ill at the wheel about 9 a.m., and had suffered a heart attack by the time rescue crews arrived. An autopsy was scheduled for today.

Billiter joined The Times in 1978 as a reporter in Los Angeles before becoming city editor of the Orange County edition. He tired of the stress of that job, though, and gave it up to become a reporter again. He retired from The Times in 1994, but continued working as a Times community correspondent.

“He was an excellent writer and an excellent city editor too,” said longtime friend Jackson Sellers, a computer systems editor for The Times.

Validation of his work came from his peers in 1994, when he received the Sky Dunlap Award from the Orange County Press Club in recognition of his journalistic career and contributions to Orange County, which included teaching part time at UC Irvine Extension.

Billiter also was well-known among Orange County runners and acted as a bridge between the newsroom and the streets as he convinced younger, more sedentary co-workers that if he could run competitively, so could they.

As proof, he ran the Los Angeles Marathon and Long Beach Marathon within a few weeks of each other. A flare-up of heart problems led to angioplasty in 1993, which knocked him out of marathons but not competitions. He simply scaled back the distances, limiting himself--at his doctor’s urging--to 5-K and 10-K races, which he often won.

“He was real inspirational to a lot of people, a lot of runners,” said Dave Reynolds, owner of a Snail’s Pace Running Shop in Fountain Valley, where Billiter received his marathon training. “After he had his surgery, he came back running so well and just got stronger and stronger. He always had a great attitude; he was never down, always upbeat. I know a lot of people are going to be sad to hear his life was taken.”

Born William Overton Billiter Jr., he took to newspaper work while still a teenager in Winchester, Ky., when at age 16 he started covering sports for the local daily, the Sun.

A 1956 graduate of the University of Kentucky, he went on to serve four years in the Air Force, primarily as a navigator stationed in San Antonio. He continued in the reserves and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel.

“He used to say that he was the worst navigator the Air Force ever had,” said Thomas, his daughter. One story, she said, had him plotting an overland course from San Antonio to Houston and not knowing he had missed the city until the crew told him to look out the window, where it could see the Gulf of Mexico. “They used to say he could lose himself in his own backyard,” she said.

Billiter worked for a succession of newspapers--including the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal and the New Orleans Times-Picayune--before joining The Times. He also worked three years in Washington, D.C., as press secretary for U.S. Rep. F. Edward Hebert (D-La.), and spent a year teaching journalism at Ohio State University.

He is survived by his wife, Maureen, who works in the classified department of The Times Orange County; two daughters, Thomas of Long Beach and Suzanne Billiter Faulkner of Ithaca, Wash.; two sons, Stephen Billiter of Orange and Patrick Billiter of Huntington Beach; and six grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements were pending.