Publisher dies in boat accident, once employed Mark Hamill
John Brewer, whose coast-to-coast journalism career spanned 50 years, including nearly two decades at The Associated Press, has died. He was 76.
Mr. Brewer and his longtime friend Randy Johnson were on their annual fly fishing trip in Montana on Friday when the boat Mr. Brewer was in hit a submerged log and flipped over, Johnson said. Two others were rescued, but Mr. Brewer drowned, he said.
“I’m still having trouble digesting it,” he said Saturday.
Mr. Brewer retired in 2015 after nearly 18 years as editor and publisher of the Peninsula Daily News in Port Angeles. Current publisher Eran Kennedy remembered him as “a true journalist and editor at heart” and “a person of unwavering integrity.”
Born on Oct. 24, 1947, Mr. Brewer got his start in journalism writing for his high school newspaper, said his wife, Barbara Wise. His first paid job was with a weekly paper in his hometown of Upland, California. From 1969-1988, he was a reporter, bureau chief and executive for The Associated Press in Seattle, Los Angeles and New York.
As Seattle bureau chief, he oversaw coverage of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, which killed 57 people and rained ash for miles around. In Los Angeles, he oversaw coverage of the 1984 Summer Olympics.
Actor Mark Hamill, of “Star Wars” fame, worked for Mr. Brewer as a copy boy in the 1970s before informing him he was leaving because he had been cast in an episode of “The Partridge Family.”
“And so ended my AP career,” Hamill wrote on the social platform X in 2022.