He graduated with honors in East Asian studies in 1976 and spoke fluent Mandarin and Cantonese. High School (now King College Prep High School) in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago and then attended Harvard University, where he was the first African-American to become a class president. Ron was class president and valedictorian at Martin Luther King, Jr. Ron was a Renaissance man who was knowledgeable, it seemed, about everything, and he enjoyed a lifelong love of learning. He worked also as a copy or news editor at the Washington Post, Buffalo-Courier Express, Newsday and Louisville Times. Ron’s journalism career began in his hometown at the Chicago Tribune. He also was the assistant managing editor for news at the Minneapolis-Star Tribune for 11 years. Louis, Ron was night news editor, the heart and soul of the Post-Dispatch, who had top responsibility every night for getting out the daily and Sunday papers.īefore joining the Post-Dispatch, Ron was deputy news and sports editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 11 years.

Louis Post-Dispatch the last 11 years of his life. Affable and remarkably humble, Ron went out of his way to help others. His extraordinary kindness, humility, humor, wit and way of putting others before himself drew people to him. His sudden death shocked his family and journalists around the country who had worked with him.Ī brilliant editor at national and regional newspapers, Ron was admired and respected in newsrooms from coast to coast. Ron passed away at 62 in January, only a few days after a diagnosis of advanced pancreatic cancer. Louis Post Dispatch are pleased to offer a new scholarship for outstanding college journalism students to honor an extraordinary and much-loved journalist - Ronald (Ron) W.

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