Former Morning Journal reporter, editor dies at 77

Richard D. “Dick” Hendrickson died July 29 in Los Angeles following a brief hospitalization for heart disease.

A former reporter and editor of The Morning Journal and well-respected educator has died.

Richard D. “Dick” Hendrickson died July 29 in Los Angeles following a brief hospitalization for heart disease. He was 77.

Hendrickson was born in Syracuse, N.Y.

After a two-year stint in the U.S. Navy, he became a reporter for his hometown paper, the Syracuse PostStandard, in 1961.

That gig briefly was followed by a stretch as a bureau chief for the Associated Press in Buffalo, N.Y.

In 1966, Hendrickson came to Ohio to open The Lorain Journal’s bureau in Norwalk.

In the intervening 35 years he spent with the paper, he served three stints as a bureau chief as well as state editor, wire editor, business editor, city editor, Sunday editor and finally editorial page editor in 1993.

In a 2001 story on Hendrickson’s retirement from The Journal, he said he enjoyed talking to readers who wrote letters to the editor and speaking to candidates during the election season.

He also was touted as an early adopter of computers in the newsroom having designed and supervised The Journal’s transition to “a Macintosh-based editorial system” in 1998.

Hendrickson also played a role in determining the content and look of the paper’s website in 1999.

He had a hand in publishing some of The Journal’s most hard-hitting stories having directed a group of reporters in 1995 on a series on Ritalin and ADHD, which won the paper a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, and his own reporting on the “Infant Charlie” child abuse case which won him a James W. Byers Media Award of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

“I always tried to understand how government worked and then watch for things that didn’t fit the pattern,” he said in the 2001 story. “One day I noticed a small article from the court beat that said a woman was arrested for severely injuring a child she was trying to adopt.

“The child was in a trial placement in her home. I knew that meant a caseworker was visiting at least weekly, and I wondered why the caseworker hadn’t seen a pattern of injuries.”

Throughout his tenure with The Journal, Hendrickson recruited young reporters and trained them; a practice that gained him the nickname “The Professor.”

When he left The Journal in 2001, he became a full time assistant professor of communications at John Carroll University in University Heights.

He continued to teach online classes for the school after moving to California.

Hendrickson’s daughter, Cheryl Randleman, 59, of New London, said she remembers another nickname her father picked up while on the beat: “Snoop.”

Randleman said her father liked talking to the people he met while reporting and telling their stories while also getting information out to the rest of northern Ohio.

She said he was loyal to The Journal and that reporting was his “life’s work.”

“He really loved working at the paper,” Randleman said.

She said after he father moved to California, he wrote a few freelance pieces, but mainly focused on teaching reporting and media ethics with UCLA Extension, and teaching journalism part-time at California State University Northridge.

Randleman said her father took to teaching easily because that’s what he did at The Journal.

Journalism seemed to be a family affair for Hendrickson who recounted a story in the 2001 article on his retirement from when his daughter Christina Hendrickson, of Norwalk, was 16 and he took her along for what ended up being a shooting investigation.

“We drove over there and found the Huron County sheriff and his chief deputy, (brothers) Dick and Bob Sutherland, investigating a fatal shooting that came out of a drug robbery in some apartments,” he said. “They were still hunting for some suspects. Chris kept me company while I worked on the story until well after midnight.”

Randleman said she worked for The Journal while in high school teletyping and sports reporting for the Norwalk Bureau.

“I was working with him from the age of 12,” she said with a laugh.

“He used to take us kids to all these places with him,” Randleman said.

She also remembers accompanying her father to the home of a pair of murder victims.

Contributions in Hendrickson’s memory can be made to a scholarship fund that will be established in his name to be given out next year. They can be sent to SPJ/LA, P.O. Box 572632, Tarzana, CA 91357.

A celebration of life service in Cleveland is being planned, with a possible memorial service later in Los Angeles, although details have not been determined.

Hendrickson