Former Sentinel editor, WWII veteran dies at 92

William Summers was among the “last of the Old Guard” and had his pulse on the community in Orlando through his role of handling letters to the editor.

Hired as a copy editor in 1955 at the Orlando Evening Star, he began a 35-year career working various editing jobs for the newspaper, which later became the Orlando Sentinel.

Summers, known to family and colleagues as Bill, died July 20 at a veterans home in Duncansville, Pa. He was 92.

Tasked with sorting through letters penned by readers, Summers excelled at selecting thoughtful contributions to the newspaper and avoided publishing hoaxes, said Jane Healy, a former Sentinel editorial page editor and managing editor.

“It was a big job. We got about 300 letters a week and they were all handwritten and all had to be verified,” Healy said. “He really had to use some good sense as to what letters were going to get in.”

Born in Bellwood, Pa., Summers served as a Navy sailor in the South Pacific during World War II. He visited Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped in August 1945, according to his niece Teresa Jeffries of Tyrone, Pa.

“He recalled seeing people badly burned and that one whole valley had nothing standing except wooden toilets,” she said.

Summers graduated from Pennsylvania State University, where he earned a degree in journalism. He met his wife, Lina, while working in 1950 at the Monongahela, Pa., newspaper.

“The day I started there, we had a three-foot snowfall, so I walked from my rooming house to the paper and there she was, this gorgeous young woman, standing at the front door. I was just smitten,” Summers said in 2011 after Lina died of cancer at 79.

He paired his love of journalism with a love for sports and had “an amazing recall of players’ and games’ statistics and plays,” according to his obituary.

He is survived by his son William Summers Jr.; sisters Rose Marie Rozick of Tyrone, Ann Nesbella of Altoona, Pa., and Kay Cory of Severna Park, Md.; and three grandsons. The couple’s daughter, Linda, died in 1996.

A prayer service was held Thursday at St. Matthew Roman Catholic Church in Tyrone.