Journalist helped develop Navajo media

Marshall Tome, 85, who helped develop a TV news report and a radio station on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico, died Friday in Arizona, said his son, Deswood Tome. He had been battling lung disease and pneumonia.

The elder Tome was born July 16, 1922, in Red Valley, Ariz. A World War II veteran, he took advantage of the GI Bill and attended the University of Kansas and the University of Missouri, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1952.

Tome was an assistant city desk editor at the San Francisco Chronicle in the late 1950s when he was asked to return to the Navajo Nation to help develop what is now called the Navajo Times -- one of the few independent American Indian newspapers in the country.

Tome, who was active in tribal government, retired in 1989.