John ‘Jack’ Lake; St. Petersburg Times Publisher

John B. “Jack” Lake, 79, St. Petersburg Times publisher who helped the Florida city gain an art museum and a baseball team. Lake served in World War II and the Korean War, working in advertising in the intervening years at the Eagle Gazette, a small daily newspaper in Lancaster, Ohio. After serving as advertising manager of the Elizabeth Journal in New Jersey, he moved to the St. Petersburg Times in 1960. Lake rose from advertising director to publisher in 1971. When he joined the newspaper, its daily circulation was 100,000; when he retired in 1984, it had risen to 270,000. Considered a leader of his community, Lake served as president of the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce and the Suncoast Chamber of Commerce. He was instrumental in bringing the Salvador Dali Museum to St. Petersburg. And along with Jim Healey, Lake was one of the first to dream that the waterfront city across the bay from larger Tampa should have its own big league baseball team. He worked to pave the way, and threw out the first pitch of the first game when St. Petersburg welcomed the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays. On Jan. 15 on Snell Isle off St. Petersburg of a stroke.