Henry Guernsey Gay

The News Tribune

Wednesday, January 6, 1990

Page A11

Tacoma, Washington

 

Newspaperman Henry Gay dies at 72

Former publisher of weekly was known for his columns

The Associated press

 

Henry Guernsey Gay, who won national awards for his irreverent weekly newspaper columns on politics and the world, has died of cancer.  He was 72.

 

His death Sunday came just two days after he retired as publisher of the weekly Shelton-Mason County Journal, a job he held for 32 years in the rural logging town of Shelton.

 

While working from a cluttered roll-top desk, Gay also churned out columns that were reprinted in more than a dozen daily and weekly papers in the region.

 

"He had a unique style of satire and was real respected around the state for his editorials," said his son, Charles Gay, the Journal's managing editor.  "He's just one of a kind as far as editorial writers go, someone who gets to the meat of an issue with just a few chosen words."

 

Gay was born in 1926 in Wheatland, Wyo., into a newspaper family.  After three years in the Navy, Gay joined his parents in their business.  In 1952, the Gays moved to Washington to take over the Buckley News Banner.  fourteen years later, Henry Gay bought the Journal, where his column was born.

 

Gay once printed the entire text of a state pornography bill, replacing blanks and initials for forbidden dirty words.  The bill subsequently was laughed out of the Legislature.

 

Years later, when the Legislature passed a bill prohibiting the media from providing full coverage of a public trial involving charges of sexual abuse of children, Gay lashed out at what he called the hypocrisy of protecting the identity of the abuser at the expense of the victim and the public.

 

During his career, Gay received the American Civil Liberties Union William O. Douglas Award for editorial excellence and the Master Editor/Publisher Award from the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association.

 

He is survived by his wife of 49 years, Fern, and children Stephen, Julie and Charles -- all newspaper industry veterans.

 

A memorial is scheduled for Jan. 16 at Saint David's Hall in Shelton.

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NOTE:  Henry Guernsey Gay was the great grandson of Ella Jane Sinex (daughter of Thomas Henry Sinex & wife Flora West), and Milus Harvey Gay.