Don Stanley, a career journalist who spent 14 years as a features writer, editor and columnist at The Bee, died Nov. 8 of age-related causes in Eugene, Ore., his family said. He was 86.
Mr. Stanley wrote with an intelligent, witty and easy- going style as a newspaperman for more than 40 years. A voracious reader, he was a book editor and book columnist at the San Francisco Examiner. He reviewed books for Life magazine and was on the editorial board of the New York Herald Tribune book review.
He worked as news editor of the armed forces newspaper, Stars and Stripes, in Germany. He was executive editor of two alternative weekly papers, the Pacific Sun in Mill Valley and the Nevada County Mountain Messenger in Grass Valley.
Mr. Stanley joined The Bee in 1980. He was a writer and editor of Out & About, a weekend features section, and spent two years as a daily columnist. In 1982, he co-edited "The Sting of The Bee: 125 Years of Editorial Cartoons from The Sacramento Bee, 1857-1982."
Born in 1925 in Park Ridge, Ill., Mr. Stanley served in the Army in the South Pacific during World War II. He earned a master's degree in journalism at the University of Iowa and began working for the Alameda Times-Star in 1953.
He settled in Eugene after retiring in 1994 and volunteered at its public library.
He had five children with his first wife, Joanne, who predeceased him. Survivors include his wife, Ellen Schlesinger; children, Darcy of Wisconsin, Kim Howard of Glendale, Ariz., Michael of Grass Valley, Peter of Santa Rosa, and Adrienne Auer of Fairfax; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
A private service is planned. Donations in memory of Mr. Stanley may be made to the Eugene Public Library or the ACLU.
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