Larry Eldridge, at 84, formerly sports editor, Christian Science Monitor

Larry Eldridge of West Newton, former sports editor for The Christian Science Monitor and television host of “Eldridge on Sports” on the Monitor Network, died Sunday from congestive heart failure. He was 84.

He was born and raised in Philadelphia.

He was a graduate of Germantown Academy and received his bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 1958.

He began his sports journalism career as a copy boy in the sports department of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Mr. Eldridge spent 11 years working at The Associated Press and was at the Portland, Maine, bureau before transferring to the Boston bureau as an assistant sports editor, covering sports on a full-time basis.

He was hired by the Christian Science Monitor in 1972 to work as the lead sports columnist covering the summer and winter Olympics that year before becoming a sports editor.

Mr. Eldridge hosted a TV interview show, “Eldridge on Sports,” on the Monitor Channel and wrote a weekly chess column for the Portland Press Herald in Maine.

He went on to teach chess to elementary school children in the Newton Community Schools program and then to children in Belmont, Brookline and Somerville Schools.

He is survived by his wife of 46 years, Joyce Leffler; three sons, Larry Jr. of Portland, Ore., Scott of Phoenixville, Pa., and Ross of Newton; three daughters, Janice Yost of Wayne, Pa., Nicole Marcus of Miami, and Robin of Cambridge; 10 grandchildren; and four greatgrandchildren.

Services will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Newton Cemetery Chapel, Newton.

Arrangements by Brezniak Rodman, West Newton.