Lacy McCrary, Pulitzer Prize winner with the Akron Beacon Journal and retired Inquirer reporter, has died at 91

Lacy McCrary, 91, formerly of Morrisville, Bucks County, a 1971 Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor with the Akron Beacon Journal, retired award-winning Inquirer reporter, and Air Force veteran, died Wednesday, March 12, of Alzheimer’s disease at his home in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Mr. McCrary joined The Inquirer from the Beacon Journal in 1973 and covered the courts, politics, and news of all sorts in Delaware, New Jersey, and suburban Pennsylvania until his retirement in 2000. He notably wrote about unhealthy conditions and fire hazards in Pennsylvania and New Jersey boardinghouses in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, and those reports earned public acclaim and resulted in new regulations to correct deadly oversights.

He interviewed first lady Rosalynn Carter in the White House and Jeannie Leavitt, the first U.S. female fighter pilot, and he was interviewed about his boardinghouse stories on the TV show Good Morning America. He was recognized by Inquirer editors for his reporting on the Gulf War in 1991 and covered countless elections, crimes, court decisions, fires, and features in Ohio, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Poland, and Russia.

On a rare Sunday night office shift downtown, he sometimes compiled The Inquirer’s “Scene” column of miscellaneous news and notes. On Monday, Nov. 25, 1985, he led the column with: “Police in Wiesbaden, West Germany, tracked a car traveling 51 mph in a 30-mph zone, but they are at a loss about who to charge with the violation. Their only evidence is a radar-camera photo of [a] Miss Piggy [mask] grinning through the open sunroof of the car.”

From 1960 to 1973, Mr. McCrary was a reporter, metropolitan editor, and statehouse bureau chief in Columbus, Ohio, for the Beacon Journal. He won a Legislative Correspondents Association award in 1968 for his coverage of a riot at the Ohio State Penitentiary, and he and nine others won the 1971 Pulitzer Prize in local general or spot news reporting for their coverage of the May 4, 1970, student protest killings at Kent State University.

His first-person story about a medical appointment with Sam Sheppard, a doctor first convicted and then acquitted of murdering his wife, appeared atop the front page of the Beacon Journal in January 1969, and he was on the front page again in July when he covered the excitement in Neil Armstrong’s hometown, Wapakoneta, Ohio, as the astronaut walked on the moon.

“For 45 years, Beth Guyver of London thought she knew who she was, the daughter of a British soldier killed in World War II, just before her birth. For 45 years, she believed her mother’s lie.”

Mr. McCrary also wrote extensively about the 1967 riots in Detroit, and he said in one of his stories for the Beacon Journal: “Occasional sniper fire cracked from nearby buildings. … My first impulse was to run, to find a doorway, to hide somewhere. But no one else was hiding. So I stood on the sidewalk and tried to imagine that the shots … were being fired far away.”

He wrote about improper loans by Ohio state officials in 1970 and spent a month in Eastern Europe in 1973 with the Regional Council for International Education. He left Ohio briefly in 1965 to be managing editor and editor of the Miami Beach Daily Sun in Florida. But he returned to the Beacon Journal, his family said, because he missed writing stories.

“He was fascinated by people,” his daughter Colleen said, “and he connected with them best one-on-one.”

Lacy Dean McCrary was born Aug. 29, 1933, in Johnson City, Tenn. His family moved to Cleveland when he was young, and he and his twin brother, Lewis, dropped out of high school to enlist in the Air Force when they were 17.

“Kenneth William Kerwin, heavyset and dark-haired, has a pocketful of memories, but no money from his life of factory work and farming, and a 25-year odyssey across America searching for clues to support his contention that he is the son of Charles A. Lindbergh, the famed aviator.”

He served in England, earned his general educational development credential in the military, and got a bachelor’s degree in journalism at Kent State in 1960. He met court stenographer Willie Bell Portwood while covering a story for the Beacon Journal, and they married in 1965 and had daughters Colleen and Kathy.

Mr. McCrary loved baseball as a boy and considered life as sports writer early on. But he discovered his niche was news and features.

He was an avid reader, especially biographies and history books, and he wrote a few freelance restaurant reviews for the Sun-News after he retired to Myrtle Beach, S.C.

He liked Italian dinners and big breakfasts. He left several book projects unfinished.

“Tcolulhowe picked up the old drum carefully, ran his leathery hand over its skin top, and banged it slowly. But rather than being seated under tall trees around a campfire in an Indian village, he was in the basement of the New Britain Township recreation building in Chalfont, Bucks County.”

He lived in Dover, Del., Bensalem, and Morrisville after he joined The Inquirer, and then split time between South Carolina and Colorado. “He was a dedicated father, lifelong learner, avid golfer, and passionate Eagles fan,” his family said in a tribute. “He loved telling people about the latest book he’d read and encouraging them to read it after him.”

His daughter Kathy said: “He was easygoing, humorous, very bright, and generous.” His daughter Colleen said: “Writing was at his core.”

In a speech he wrote for elementary school students, Mr. McCrary said: ”Writing for a living can take you to new places, where you may meet new people, do new things, and perhaps leave a lasting mark on history.”

In addition to his wife and daughters, Mr. McCrary is survived by four grandchildren and other relatives. His brother and a sister died earlier.

Services are to be held later.