Veteran AP journalist Alvin Orton Jr. dies in Ohio at age 84

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Al Orton, a veteran Associated Press journalist who spent much of his career on the overnight shift, mentoring dozens of reporters along the way, has died in Ohio.

He was 84.

Orton, who used his full name of “Alvin Orton Jr.” in his byline, died Wednesday in Columbus of a heart attack after experiencing several health problems, said his son, Andrew Orton.

Orton worked for the AP from 1963 until he retired in 2006. His father, Alvin Orton Sr., also was an AP editor, joining the news cooperative in Chicago in 1936 and serving as a bureau chief in Indianapolis and Minneapolis before returning to Chicago and retiring in 1971.

“When I asked him what he thought about my going to work for the AP, he said, ‘Fine, but you won’t work for me,’” Orton recalled in a remembrance of his father in 1987, the year he died. “And I told him, ‘That’s OK, because I wouldn’t work for you, anyway.’ That’s the way we both wanted it.”

One of Al Orton Jr.’s first assignments was covering the 1963 execution by electric chair of a man who’d killed a grocery store clerk. Orton was one of only two reporters at the former Ohio Penitentiary, and unbeknownst to him then, he witnessed the last use of the chair in the state.

Orton spent his retirement enjoying time with his wife, Loretta, who survives him, along with two sons and four daughters, 16 grandchildren and several-great children. A fifth daughter died several years ago of cancer.