Compassionate investigative reporter, editor who ministered late in life
The son of a newspaperman, Roger W. Stuart II devoted four decades of his life to reporting — doggedly but sensitively — on the Pittsburgh area’s politicians, civil rights activists, gangsters, municipal leaders, school officials, disadvantaged individuals and many more.
And in a rare twist for an investigative journalist, he capped his career by serving as lay minister to a Presbyterian congregation in Penn Hills.
In either calling, the softspoken, meticulous, evercaring Mr. Stuart was a true storyteller, using his words to educate the broader community about issues the public ought to hear about. He invested months at a time in newsrooms, burrowing through records and making countless calls to bring to light such problems as high black infant mortality rates, unregulated personal care homes and hazardous workplaces.
“He liked to tackle some of the most nettlesome issues of our day,” recalled Maddy Ross, one of Mr. Stuart’s former editors at The Pittsburgh Press. “He was humble — fairly quiet for a reporter — but he had a way of engaging people so that they would open up to him.”
Mr. Stuart, who mentored numerous younger journalists in reporting techniques and solid news writing at both the Press and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 1961-2004, died in his Dormont home Sunday at age 78. A survivor of two heart attacks in his earlier years, he had several latelife afflictions and died after contracting bronchitis.
While Mr. Stuart made his biggest splashes with award-winning investigative series and special projects, he also spent many years covering suburban meetings, state government affairs, civil rights, welfare issues and other beats. He spent time as an editorial writer for the Press after his first heart attack at 37, and his last position was as editor of the Post-Gazette’s South suburban section. He had joined the Post-Gazette after it acquired the rival newspaper in 1993.
Mr. Stuart’s beard, glasses, pate, paunch and full-throated laugh, combined with his compassionate nature, gave him a bit of a Santa Claus aura to younger reporters. But he was never one to shy away from tough questioning of officials, a trait he likely inherited from his father, who covered the nation’s capital for the former New York World-Telegram& Sun. The political reporter’s son grew up in Laurel, Md., became editor of the George Washington University student newspaper and landed his first job at the Press immediately after college graduation.
Mr. Stuart’s son, Albert, of Dormont, said, “My grandfather went into it for the writing angle, but for Dad, it was all about doing the reporting and getting a good story. ... His mental Rolodex was beyond comprehension. The list of people he knew by sight and name, and who knew him and knew him well, blew my mind.”
Many sons learn how to shave, drive and tie a tie from their fathers, but when journalist Albert was himself an aspiring before becoming a minister, his father taught him how to file a Freedom of Information Act request — a technique of investigative reporters to obtain hard-toaccess government records.
Mr. Stuart could be as methodical as anyone in a newsroom — checking documents, making calls, visiting row offices for records, calling back the same sources to double-check information. Indefatigable is what he was.
“Giving him a cardboard box full of information to sift through was like a gift to Roger,” said Lawrence Walsh, a longtime colleague at both newspapers.
When he combined the doggedness with a sense of justice on behalf of lessprivileged members of society, Mr. Stuart’s exhaustive efforts could sometimes exasperate editors, who admired him just the same. He was relentless in digging into the region’s inexplicably high black infant mortality rates for an extensive and high-praised Press series in 1991.
“It bugged him so badly that it occurred in this town that has such great medical facilities,” Ms. Ross recalled. “I couldn’t get him to stop working on that story. He kept following every lead that might have an answer — it really touched his heart and soul.”
Mr. Stuart put ample time into exploring and explaining Pittsburgh’s black community, including during and after the 1968 riots that erupted in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. In a different project in 1985, he won the trust of the Amish community in eastern Ohio to describe their lifestyle in a way that few other journalists had or could.
“He wanted to talk to everybody, and make sure everybody’s stories got heard, and he was somebody everyone would talk to because they felt they got a fair shake from him,” said his son, Albert. Mr. Stuart grew up Presbyterian and was a longtime parishioner at Sunset Hills United Presbyterian Church in Mt. Lebanon, but he took his faith to a new level after retiring from newspaper work. He became trained as a lay minister and spent 10 years essentially running United Presbyterian Church of Universal in Penn Hills, which had no ordained minister. He was joined many times in his work there by his wife, Cynthia, the high school sweetheart to whom he was married for 57 years before her death in October. She had also assisted him in his writing, listening to Mr. Stuart read his stories over the phone — that was him again being unusually methodical — and offering her advice before he submitted them to editors. In addition to his son Albert, Mr. Stuart is survived by two other sons, Joshua, of Brentwood, and William, of Massillon, Ohio; a sister, Barbara Stuart Swisher, of Grass Valley, Calif; his twin brother, William T. Stuart, of Myrtle Beach, S.C.; and nine grandchildren. Friends will be received from 4 to 8 p.m. Sunday at Laughlin Cremation & Funeral Tributes Inc., 222 Washington Road, Mt. Lebanon. A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. March 18 at United Presbyterian Church of Universal, 2545 Main St., Penn Hills. Memorial contributions may be made to the University of Pittsburgh’s Alzheimer Disease Research Center, 200 Lothrop St., Pittsburgh 15213, or to United Presbyterian Church of Universal.