Carl Beyer, former DDN news editor, dies at 92
Carl W. Beyer, a former Dayton Daily News news editor, died May 15 at age 92.
Beyer spent 42 of his 92 years as a professional newsman, many of those in Dayton, where his wide-ranging career took him from the North American Air Defense Command’s secret Cheyenne Mountain underground command post near Colorado Springs to a summons to the White House to hear President Lyndon Johnson sell his “Great Society” program.
“Carl’s tenure as news editor was the longest in Daily News history and he directed the paper’s presentation of such major news events as the resignation of President Richard Nixon, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the Xenia tornado, the blizzard of 1978, the Kent State shootings, the first lunar landing and the Challenger disaster,” his obituary said.
According to his obituary,
his favorite job was writing stories about “everyday citizens, whom he liked to refer to as ‘the real Americans.’”
Born in Hamilton in 1930, the son of Charles and Alma (Geisler) Beyer, Carl graduated from Eaton High School, and went on to serve in the Air Force during the Korean War. He became city editor of the Daily News in Independence, Missouri, and later was news editor of the Review-Courier in Oklahoma.
In 1956 he won the United Press award for the best news reporting in Oklahoma for coverage of the mysterious fire death of a Northwestern Oklahoma State College student.
That led to a United Press job offer, which he turned down to return to Ohio in 1957 as assistant state editor of the Dayton Daily News.
In that position he led the expansion of the paper’s regional coverage and established news bureaus in Xenia, Troy, Lebanon, Greenville and Sidney, his obituary said.
In 1965, he was named news editor with the responsibility for the selection and presentation of the entire general news content of the paper, his obit noted.
He won many awards, including five consecutive years when the Daily News Page 1 was judged the best of all Ohio metropolitan newspapers, his obit recalled.
Carl met his wife, Roberta Trittschuh, in 1959 while she was serving as Versailles correspondent for the Daily News. They were married Dec. 14, 1960, at Trinity Lutheran Church in Versailles and had three daughters and a son, Carl Jr., who died when he was 2, his obit said.
He is survived by his wife of 61 years, Roberta, his daughters Dr. Leslie Beyer-Hermsen and husband Terry of Delaware, Ohio, Bobbi Beyer of Dayton and Carla Higgins of Oakland California; grandchildren Noël and Noah Beyer-Hermsen, and Kylie, Lola and Lindsey Higgins, a brother John Neiser of Dayton, and several nieces and nephews.
His body was donated to the Boonshoft School of Medicine.