-Caveat Lector-
----- Original Message -----
>
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/18/MN44120.DTL
>
> Scion of Media Empire Dead From Stroke at 85
>
> Son of legendary publisher, father of kidnapped heiress
>
> Susan Sward, Chronicle Staff Writer Monday, December 18, 2000
>
> Randolph Apperson Hearst, the billionaire newspaper heir who became
> known worldwide when his daughter Patricia was kidnapped by a
> revolutionary group in 1974, died at a New York City hospital today
> after a massive stroke. He was 85.
>
> The last surviving son of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst,
> Hearst began work as a cub reporter covering cops, courts and City
> Hall on the Hearst- owned Call-Bulletin in San Francisco. He
> eventually served from 1973 to 1996 as chairman of the Hearst Corp.
>
> But Hearst -- heir to a gold, silver and copper fortune -- was best
> known as the father of Patricia Hearst, whose kidnapping by the
> Symbionese Liberation Army made front-page headlines around the world.
>
> Throughout that ordeal, Hearst -- then editor and president of the San
> Francisco Examiner -- left his Hillsborough mansion regularly to face
> the battery of television cameras outside his front door, calmly
> discussing the latest communique the family had received from the SLA.
>
> When the SLA demanded that the Hearsts give millions of dollars in
> free food to California's poor, he resolutely headed up the People In
> Need giveaway program.
>
> The initial distribution was marred by confusion and violence in San
> Francisco, but Hearst pledged $2 million toward the effort and
> eventually more than 90,000 bags and cartons of food were distributed.
>
> "Randy was the center of calm in a very turbulent period," said his
> nephew, William Randolph Hearst III, who visited his uncle often
> during the months after the kidnapping.
>
> After her 57-day captivity in a closet, Patricia Hearst emerged to
> take the name "Tania" and denounce her family.
>
> She took part in a San Francisco bank robbery, was caught by
> authorities in 1975, and was tried and convicted, serving 21 months in
> prison.
>
> Six SLA members died in a May 1974 shootout with police in Los Angeles
> when tear gas canisters fired by officers set the SLA hideout on fire.
>
> After her arrest, Patricia Hearst renounced her captors and in 1979
> married an ex-San Francisco police officer, Bernard Shaw, her former
> bodyguard. She has two children and now lives in a wealthy Connecticut
> suburb.
>
> After her arrest and trial, media focus on the Hearst family slowly
> faded, and her father returned to the relatively private life he had
> led before.
>
> Recently, Forbes Magazine set Randolph Hearst's wealth at $1.8 billion
> and listed him as No. 150 of the 400 wealthiest people in the country.
> But acquaintances said that for all his riches and his role for many
> years as the family patriarch, Hearst often seemed down-to-earth.
>
> "He was a very bright, thoughtful, caring guy," said William Coblentz,
> a lawyer and friend for many years. "He was self-effacing, devoid of
> prejudice, and he cared for people. He had a desire to listen -- which
> a lot of people in his position do not have."
>
> But Coblentz also said he found Hearst "to be a man who sold himself
> short. I think he felt he didn't live up to the expectations of his
> father -- whatever they were. I think he felt he wasn't as smart as he
> should be -- which was absolutely untrue."
>
> Hearst's mother, Millicent, gave birth to him and his twin brother,
> David, on Dec. 2, 1915, in New York City. (David Hearst died May 12,
> 1986, in Los Angeles, at age 70. When he died, he was president of the
> William Randolph Hearst Foundation.)
>
> Inevitably, the towering shadow of Hearst's father stretched over his
> life.
>
> When William Randolph Hearst -- the inspiration for the powerful Orson
> Welles movie "Citizen Kane" -- died in 1951, he did not leave any of
> his five sons in charge of his media empire.
>
> Instead, the 88-year-old Hearst left his vast holdings under the
> stewardship of professional managers: Hearst family members were given
> five of the 13 seats on the board of trustees running Hearst Corp.
>
> "When you look at the trust Randy's father established, the running of
> the company was left to outsiders because his father didn't have
> confidence in his sons," Coblentz said.
>
> He described Randolph Hearst as "being content to let people not
> associated with the family run the company because they did so well"
> -- vastly increasing and diversifying the corporation's holdings.
>
> Today, Hearst Corp. owns or manages 27 TV stations (through a majority
> ownership in Hearst-Argyle Television), 16 magazines, 12 daily
> newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, and several cable
> enterprises.
>
> It also has huge real estate holdings, including timber and
> agricultural operations in California and commercial properties in New
> York City and San Francisco. Forbes estimated the corporation's 1999
> revenues at $4.4 billion.
>
> William Randolph Hearst III, who was the San Francisco Examiner's
> publisher from 1984 to 1994 and today is a venture capitalist, said he
> thought all his grandfather's sons "understood their father wanted the
> company to continue. I think my uncle knew his father's major
> objective was that the newspapers would continue. I never heard him
> complain about it."
>
> Throughout his career, Randolph Hearst held many positions within the
> corporation. At the time of his death he was president of the William
> Randolph Hearst Foundation.
>
> "Randy Hearst shared his father's strong vision and his abiding belief
> in the media business," said Frank A. Bennack Jr., president and chief
> executive officer of Hearst Corp.
>
> In the late 1930s, Hearst became an assistant to the publisher on one
> of the family's newspapers, the Atlanta Georgian. In 1938 he married
> Catherine Wood Campbell of Atlanta.
>
> After the family sold the Atlanta paper, Hearst moved to the
> Call-Bulletin in San Francisco in 1940, taking a job similar to the
> one he held in Atlanta.
>
> In 1942, Hearst, an accomplished pilot, interrupted his newspaper
> career to take a commission as a second lieutenant in the Army's Air
> Transport Command. He rose to the rank of captain.
>
> William Randolph Hearst III said some of his earliest memories of his
> uncle included the impression of him as a physically daring man who
> had been a flight instructor during World War II.
>
> "I remember my father (the late William Randolph Hearst Jr.) told me,
> 'Your uncle could have been a professional pilot.' " William Randolph
> Hearst III recalled that sometime during World War II his uncle had
> been piloting a plane in the United States, and it ran into trouble.
>
> "He was able to put it down somewhere in a cornfield, and everyone in
> the plane walked away," his nephew said.
>
> After his discharge from the Army, Hearst worked as an associate
> publisher at the Oakland Post-Enquirer and in 1947 returned to the
> Call-Bulletin as executive editor. Three years later, he became
> publisher of the paper at age 34.
>
> Throughout the 1950s and 1960s he held several jobs in Hearst
> Publishing Co. , and in 1965 he became both chairman of the executive
> committee of Hearst Corp. and one of its directors. In the early 1970s
> he headed the Examiner and lived in Hillsborough.
>
> Raul Ramirez, now news director of KQED in San Francisco, remembers
> how Hearst hired him away from the Washington Post to be a reporter on
> the Examiner.
>
> At the time, Hearst's daughter was still being held by the SLA, which
> sent him tape recordings harshly attacking his family and his
> newspaper.
>
> "I remember he pointed to his window and said, 'There is a city out
> there that I didn't know existed, and we need people like you to help
> me see it better,' " said Ramirez, who left for KQED in 1991. "I saw
> him as a very concerned and troubled father who had heard those taped
> observations that were foreign to him, but in some way they resonated
> with him."
>
> In his private life, Hearst involved himself in many civic groups,
> sitting on the boards of several charities.
>
> Although educated at some of the country's best private schools -- the
> Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and Harvard University -- he
> maintained an intense interest in public education, particularly at
> the elementary and high school levels, according to William Randolph
> Hearst III.
>
> "Randy gave a lot of money to school systems in California," his
> nephew said. "I think Randy was interested in finding ways of
> introducing the benefits of wealthy school districts to kids" without
> such benefits. "He got interested in the use of computers in the
> schools."
>
> When he was relaxing, one of Hearst's favorite spots was Wyntoon, the
> Hearst family estate on thousands of acres of land near Mount Shasta,
> where he fished for trout in the McCloud River.
>
> Earlier this year he bought the Vanderbilt mansion in Manalapan, Fla.,
> for $29.87 million from Mel Simon, owner of the Indiana Pacers
> professional basketball team.
>
> Hearst and his first wife, Catherine, were divorced in 1982, and his
> second marriage, to Maria Scruggs, also ended in divorce. He married
> his third wife, Veronica de Uribe, in 1987.
>
> Up to the last, Hearst remained interested in the business workings
> and content of his family's newspaper holdings.
>
> "Randy called up regularly to complain about the size of the stock
> type in the business section or to talk about politics," said Phil
> Bronstein, former executive editor of the San Francisco Examiner.
>
> "He always struck me as being a kind person, and he had a keen
> interest in what was in the paper," said Bronstein, who became
> executive editor of The Chronicle after Hearst Corp. bought it. "Randy
> clearly paid attention to what was going on in the world."
>
> Along with his wife, Veronica, and daughter Patricia Campbell Hearst
> Shaw, he is survived by his four other daughters: Catherine Millicent
> Hearst, Virginia Anne Hearst Randt, Anne Randolph Hearst and Victoria
> Veronica Hearst.
>
> Family members said a funeral will be held Wednesday in New York City.
> His body will be brought to California on Thursday for burial in the
> family plot at Colma.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
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