Ultimately, he was able to do everything right-handed, he said, except serve hard in tennis.. When he started buying vintage cars again several years later, he purchased another 1931 Duesenberg, this time for $1.2 million, en route to building another world-class collection. He sought largely solitary recreational activities throughout his adult life surfing, lifting weights, racing, cycling, hunting. He died in 2002. His most serious accident came in 1990, when a musk ox trampled him in the Northwest Territories of Canada and he had to be airlifted to a hospital. In 1995, when he was 68, his motorcycle collided with a tractor in New Zealand, leaving him with part of the big toe on his left foot missing, another toe severely damaged and the rest of the foot largely numb. Otis Chandler (November 23, 1927 February 27, 2006) was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions. In a cover story on Chandler in 1967, Newsweek said, In the six years since his father made him publisher of The Times, Chandler has staged one of the most remarkable palace revolutions in U.S. journalism. Under Chandlers direction, The Times scrambled to hire the best of the reporters and editors from the two defunct papers and to get rid of its own deadwood. Historical records and family trees related to Chandler Otis. But by then, he had so little real power and so little influence with the members of his family who controlled the paper that when they decided four months later to sell Times Mirror to Tribune Co. of Chicago, he said he hadnt even known about the negotiations until he heard rumors, nothing more, two days before the deal was consummated. And he wrote an exhaustive, if somewhat ponderous, seven-part series about the treatment of mentally ill children. For the first time in five years, I felt like I wasnt a leper. Numerous top Times reporters left the paper, many to join the New York Times or to pursue other interests. Most historians credit Otis mother Buff to her friends and family with persuading her husband to make their son his successor. Despite his family's wealth, Chandler's father insisted that he perform field labor and did not spoil him with gifts. When Burke asked Chandler if hed like to invest in his company and introduce Burke to other potential investors among the publishers wealthy friends Chandler was happy to comply. In 1960, he became publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Within an hour, I had gathered things up in my briefcase, told my secretary, Well, we can shine those afternoon meetings off, and headed for Dana Point.., In a speech to a hunting conference in 1980, he described some of his other outdoor pursuits: I am primarily a gun hunter, both rifle and shotgun. Chandler was diagnosed seven months ago, although doctors had determined about a year earlier that he was suffering from some form of dementia, his wife said. He had purchased his first a 1931 Duesenberg in 1968 for $35,000, and he built a world-class collection of Porsches, Ferraris, Duesenbergs, Cadillacs, Packards and other classics before selling all of them to meet the financial terms of his divorce settlement. So did the shutdown in January 1962 of the Mirror and the Examiner, the morning Hearst newspaper. He attended Dartmouth College, and on a dare, he jumped into a vat of starch that had frozen over during winter, which led to severe pneumonia. While he was hunting in Mozambique in 1964, an elephant charged him, his wife and their guide. They told me Id have to learn to do everything left-handed., With characteristic tenacity, Chandler exercised the arm rigorously, and six months later he could lift it over his head. After his divorce, Chandler had begun to move his primary residence so often two places in Malibu, then Hancock Park, back to Malibu, Ojai, Rancho Matilija, Oregon, Ojai again that his children began teasing him about it. When he lost, he delivered a diatribe that would long haunt him, bitterly denouncing the press coverage by which, it was widely realized, he meant The Times and promising, You wont have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference., Years later, Otis Chandler would insist that the paper wasnt as bad as some people said when I took over. The paper's Sunday magazine on October 10, 1999, was a special issue dedicated to the new Staples Center sports arena in downtown L.A., home to the Lakers, Clippers and Kings. After the series was published, Otis asked for an editorial criticizing the Birchers. Many Chandler associates said his marriages breakup and the end of his publishership were inextricably intertwined. Chandler said he wanted to hunt only the rarest and the biggest and the best, and he killed more than 100 such animals 10-foot brown bears and polar bears, lions and musk ox, wild antelope and mountain sheep many of which he had mounted on the walls of a trophy room in the home he shared with his first wife in San Marino. He worked out daily, lifting weights in a gym he had built at The Times and improvising when he was traveling. In 1977, Chandler brought Tom Johnson, publisher of the Dallas Times-Herald and a former aide to President Johnson (no relation), to Los Angeles as president of The Times and heir apparent for publisher. [2] At Stanford he was a successful shot putter. As he did in every posting at The Times, he filled notebook after notebook with his thoughts on possible improvements. But he never interfered with an editorial decision, Thomas said, never tried to tell me how a story should be written or edited or played, or how a page should look.. Chandler who learned to hunt when he was 10, shooting ducks with his father began big-game hunting a year after he became publisher, and for most of the rest of his life, he tried to go on at least one major hunting trip a year, in Botswana, Mongolia, Afghanistan and Ethiopia, among other places. Contact Information The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, CA 91108, Phone: (626) 405-2191; Email: reference@huntington.org, www.huntington.org Access-restricted-item true Addeddate [1], Chandler was an enthusiastic athlete and thrill seeker, an image he actively cultivated. It was at Watkins Glen that Chandler got to know Bettina Whitaker, who was an executive at Shakeys International, a sponsor of his Watkins Glen car. Compare DNA and explore genealogy for Otis Ashmore Chandler born 1891 Five Points, Banks, Georgia, United States died 1956 DeKalb, Georgia, United States including ancestors + children + Y-chromosome DNA + more in the free family tree community. No publisher in America improved a paper so quickly on so grand a scale, took a paper that was marginal in qualities and brought it to excellence as Otis Chandler did, David Halberstam wrote in The Powers That Be, his 1979 book about the news media. But Thomas said it really didnt take much persuasion, because he really did want to go., Chandler himself said: I think some of the family members and some of the corporate people were hoping I would step aside although I dont recall that there was strong pressure.. They never forgave her for her apparent role in Otis ascension over Philip. New Search for: Last Name First Name (optional) Locality: Worldwide Information for This Surname Explore MyHeritage's records for the Otis family (Source: MyHeritage) Cemeteries When Chandler left the publishers office and again when he left the chairmans job, his former colleagues worried that without him, they would no longer be immune to corporate and outside pressures. "I was raised to hate the unions," Chandler said. Chandler was never a meddler or an intruder. While in college, he sometimes worked summers at the paper, most often moving printing plates and other heavy equipment. Was the daughter of General Harrison Gray Otis and Secretary of the Times-Mirror Company (formerly the publishing company of the Los Angeles Times ). In the next three years, The Times changed as perhaps no other American newspaper has ever done in such a short time. Chandler was growing weary, worn down by the rigors of work and the burdens of responsibility, dispirited by GeoTek and his failing marriage, getting by mostly on nervous energy, with big circles under my eyes, he later said. He was, in general, something of a loner, a trait he traced partly to spending my young years on that ranch in Sierra Madre, a little remote, rather than on a neighborhood street with a lot of kids. Asked repeatedly in one interview to name his best childhood friends, he came up blank. Sierra Canyon proves to be too much for Taft in Division I regional basketball opener, High school soccer: Southern California Regional results and updated pairings, High school basketball: Southern California and Northern California Regional results and updated pairings, Clippers still seeking right roster combination as they fall to Timberwolves. Away from the paper, off the board, with most of his Times Mirror stock in trust, he no longer had the power or the inclination to do anything concrete, not even as a fourth third-generation newspapering Chandler. Marian Otis Chandler (1866-1952), Born Emma Marian Otis. Chandler, who had retired 19 years prior, sent his message directly to reporters, to the dismay of the newspaper's management. There was widespread speculation after he gave up his corporate titles that he had been gently nudged aside by long-disgruntled family members. His two predecessors as chairman his father and Murphy had been invited to remain on the board, in a non-voting capacity, after their 70th birthdays, but Chandler was not extended a similar invitation, and he was clearly hurt by that. Chandler's family owned a stake in the newspaper since his great-grandfather Harrison Gray Otis joined the company in 1882, the year after the Los Angeles Daily Times began publication. 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