AARONS, Leroy (F.) 1933-2004

* Indicates that a listing has been compiled from secondary sources believed to be reliable, but has not been personally verified for this edition by the author sketched.

OBITUARY NOTICE— See index for CA sketch: Born December 8, 1933, in New York, NY; died of a heart attack November 28, 2004, in Santa Rosa, CA. Journalist, educator, and author. A respected journalist and newspaper editor, Aarons was also notable as a cofounder of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Initially studying psychology at Brown University, where he earned a B.A. in 1955, he later switched to journalism and received a master's degree from Columbia University in 1958. At the time, he was still in the U.S. Navy Reserve, which he left, with the rank of lieutenant, in 1959. His first journalism job was with the New Haven, Connecticut, Journal-Courier, where he was a reporter and then city editor. Aarons joined the Washington Post in 1962 as an editor and became known as the "Silver Slasher" because of his editorial style and silver hair. Serving as a national correspondent from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, Aarons covered a number of major stories, such as Senator Robert F. Kennedy's presidential campaign, Kennedy's later funeral after his assassination, and the 1967 Newark, New Jersey, riots. Leaving the Post in 1976, he joined the staff at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was involved with the summer program for minority journalists. A year spent in Israel as a freelance correspondent in 1982 was followed by a move to the Oakland Tribune in California where Aarons served as executive editor. Leading efforts to diversify the paper and boost circulation, he became the paper's senior vice president. Under his leadership, the Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for coverage of the Loma Prieta, California, earthquake. In 1991, Aarons returned to freelancing, publishing his book Prayers for Bobby: A Mother's Coming to Terms with the Suicide of Her Gay Son (1995), while also writing the radio docudrama Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers (1991) and the libretto Monticello (2000). Aside from these later accomplishments, Aarons came into the limelight when he announced his homosexuality at a 1989 American Society of Newspaper Editors conference while presenting a paper about homosexual journalists. The next year, he and several other journalists founded the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, for which he served as president until 1997. In 1999 he joined the University of Southern California faculty as a professor of journalism and director of the Annenberg School's sexual orientation issues-in-the-news program. At the time of his death, he was in the midst of writing a play about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

New York Times, November 30, 2004, p. A21.

Washington Post, November 30, 2004, p. B6.