Former Post-Tribune bureau chief Kingsbury dead at 97

A Post-Tribune pioneer for Porter County, the newspaper’s first reporter to staff a bureau there, has died.

Charles Jordan Kingsbury, 97, of Valparaiso, died Sunday. He joined what was then the Gary Post-Tribune in 1958 and opened the paper’s first bureau in the county in March 1959, becoming bureau chief in 1967, a position he held until his retirement at the end of 1985, according to his obituary.

Former Post-Tribune reporter and editor Jim Procter, who worked for the paper for 32 years until 2011, worked with Kingsbury in the Porter County bureau in Valparaiso in 1979. Procter described Kingsbury as an old school journalist who could be cranky but also was kind.

At the time, the paper came out in the afternoon and Kingsbury would come to work at 5:30 a.m. Kingsbury’s routine, Proctor said, was to work until lunch, go home and take a nap and come back to the office to finish his day by 2:30 p.m.

In November 1979, Procter’s daughter was born. Still fairly new at the paper, Procter didn’t have the seniority to take time off but Kingsbury took care of him.

“He said take today off, take tomorrow off if you need to,”

Procter said. “He covered for me and didn’t need to. He was a nice guy. He was easy to work with.”

Procter, who said the biggest story he covered when he was in the Porter County office was the beginning of the Popcorn Festival, which included attending a meeting with Orville Redenbacher, noted that Kingsbury was “an easy man to work with and to work for.”

One night, Procter covered an airport board meeting where nothing newsworthy happened and board members spent the meeting sharing airplane stories. The next day, Kingsbury wanted to know where his story was and Procter told him there was no story.

In contrast, late longtime Post-Tribune reporter Frank Wiget would come back from a meeting and write everything that happened, Procter said.

“That’s what Charlie liked,” he added.

Kingsbury’s son Kyle, who lives in Valparaiso, described his father as “something else.” His father, he said, didn’t talk much about work other than things happening locally, like going down to the police station.

“It’s just regular memories of Dad being around and there for us, just going fishing and hanging out,” his son said, adding that after he retired, he volunteered for the local chapter of the American Red Cross, including writing its newsletter.

Kingsbury, according to his obituary, was a World War II veteran, serving in the U.S. Navy, earning six battle stars for action in the Western Pacific.

After his discharge from the Navy in 1946, Kingsbury operated his own farm for two years before enrolling at Cornell College where he received a degree in 1951. He earned his master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1955.

Kingsbury worked on newspapers in five Midwest states before coming to the Post-Tribune. During his career there, he covered news conferences of many of the nation’s leaders, including President Richard Nixon; Robert Kennedy; Barry Goldwater; Nelson Rockefeller; and many more.

In 1956 he married Mary Jean Kittler, who preceded him in death in 2011.

He also is survived by a son, Shannon, also of Valparaiso, as well as two granddaughters and two sisters.

Visitation takes place from 10 to 11 a.m. Friday at Moeller Funeral Home, 104 Roosevelt Road, Valparaiso, with the funeral beginning at 11 a.m. Burial will follow at Memorial Park Cemetery.