Randolph Hearst, a Hearst, 85

["Deathwatch Central" <cdw@slick.org>]

Monday December 18 7:44 PM ET

Randolph Hearst, kidnap victim's father, is dead 


SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Randolph Apperson Hearst, last surviving son of
newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst and father of Patricia Hearst, the
kidnapped heiress of the 1970s, died Monday of a stroke. He was 85.

Hearst, who inherited a publishing fortune now worth an estimated $1.8
billion, died in New York Presbyterian Hospital, a Hearst Corp. statement
said.

``Randolph Hearst shared his father's strong vision and his abiding
passion for the publishing business,'' Hearst Corp. President Frank
Bennack Jr. said in a statement. ``He played a key role in the life of the
company. ... He was a greatly admired colleague and a true friend.''

Randolph Hearst began work as a cub reporter on the Hearst-owned
Call-Bulletin in San Francisco and eventually rose to become chairman of
Hearst Corp. from 1973 to 1996.

He made headlines himself in 1974 when his daughter Patricia was kidnapped
by the Symbionese Liberation Army, beginning 57 days of captivity that
ended with her emergence as a radical in her own right, renouncing her
family and adopting the name Tania.

Patience And Calm

Throughout the ordeal, one of the great media phenomena of the decade,
Randolph Hearst patiently faced the television cameras and calmly pleaded
for his daughter's return. When the kidnappers demanded that Hearst donate
millions of dollars in free food to help California's poor, he launched
the People in Need giveaway program, which eventually distributed more
than 90,000 bags and cartons of food.

``Randy was the center of calm in a very turbulent period,'' his nephew,
William Randolph Hearst III, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Patricia Hearst took part in a San Francisco bank robbery and was captured
by police in 1975. She was tried and convicted and sentenced to 21 months
in prison.

After her arrest, she denounced her captors and eventually married Bernard
Shaw, a former San Francisco police officer who had become her
bodyguard. She now has two children, lives in Connecticut and is seeking a
presidential pardon for her bank robbery conviction.

Randolph Hearst, whose publishing riches were built atop a gold, silver
and copper fortune, was recently listed by Forbes magazine as No. 150 of
the 400 richest people in the country. He was born in New York in 1915.

William Randolph Hearst, who died in 1951 at the age of 88, did not leave
control of the vast Hearst media empire to any one of his five sons but
put it under the stewardship of professional managers while Hearst family
members received five of the 13 seats on the board of directors.

Second World War Service

Randolph Hearst graduated from Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and
Harvard University and served in the U.S. Army Air Force from 1942 to
1945, attaining the rank of captain.

After his discharge, he returned to the San Francisco area and in 1947
rejoined the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, becoming its publisher at the
age of 34.

The privately held Hearst Corp., which owns some 12 newspapers, 16
magazines and 27 television stations around the country, this year sold
its one-time flagship newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, and completed
purchase of the stronger San Francisco Chronicle -- concluding one of the
nation's greatest newspaper rivalries.

Randolph Hearst, who continued to serve in various posts in the Hearst
Corp. throughout the 1960s and 1970s, was president of the William
Randolph Hearst Foundation at the time of his death.

Hearst is survived by his third wife, Veronica de Uribe, his daughter
Patricia Hearst Shaw, four other daughters and four grandchildren. After a
funeral in New York on Wednesday, his body will be brought to California
for burial Thursday in the family plot south of San Francisco.

Lawyer William Coblentz, a family friend for many years, said Hearst long
sought to escape the shadow of his famous father and developed a quiet,
compassionate style at odds with the bluster associated with the Hearst
name.

``He was a very bright, thoughtful, caring guy,'' Coblentz told the
Chronicle. ``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.''

Reuters/Variety REUTERS 



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