Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Monday, October 01, 2007 at 14:05:35 :
Marin Independent Journal
Saturday, May 31, 1997
Noted editor dies at Kentfield home
Was member of pioneer Marin family
G. Stanleigh “Stan” Arnold, a member of Marin’s pioneer Kent family and a veteran editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, died peacefully at his Kentfield home Thursday from a brain tumor. He was 78.
Noted professionally for having discovered columnists like Abigail “Dear Abby” Van Buren and cartoonists like Gary “Far Side” Larson and Phil “Farley” Frank of Sausalito, he was also an amiable wit, a loving family man and “the quintessential gentleman,” says Jean Arnold of San Quentin Village, one of his three daughters.
“He had his own very high standards, but he was very accepting of other people,” she says. “He walked into the world with no expectations, and was bery grateful for everything he got.”
He was born George Stanleigh Arnold but “hardly anybody but salesmen and cops called him George,” he said in an obituary he prepared. He was the son of a San Francisco attorney who served in Washington, D.C., as a special assistant attorney general under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His mother was Elizabeth Kent Arnold, a founder of Planned Parenthood in Marin and the oldest daughter of William and Elizabeth Kent, who donated Muir Woods as a national monument.
He grew up in Kentfield in a home 100 yards from the house where he died. In a 1993 interview with the Marin Independent Journal, he remembered his boyhood on the vast family property that later became Kent Woodlands. Cows roamed the hills then; he helped Kent dairymen deliver milk to families in Kentfield and Ross.
He graduated from Stanford University in 1941, and served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1944, some of that time as skipper of an aviation rescue boat in the Marshall Islands.
He went to work in 1945 for the Chronicle, where he wooed fellow Stanford grad Jane Donald, a colleague who became his wife of almost 49 years. They were married in Baker, Ore., in 1948.
“We had a wonderful marriage,” she says. “I am grateful for so many years.”
His humor often colored their partnership. “I’d get so mad,” she says. “In the middle of every conversation I’d have to say, “Stan, I’m trying to be serious.”
Arnold began on the Chronicle as a feature writer and later became editor of “This World,” feature editor and editor of the Sunday paper, and general manager of the Chronicle Features syndicate. He was president of the American Association of Sunday & Feature Editors. He retired in 1981.
“In retirement,” he wrote for his obituary, “he did precious little, editing copy for chronicle Features, protesting U.S. complicity in Central American blood shedding.” He was arrested outside the Marine Recruitment Center in San Rafael after protesting U.S. involvement in Nicaragua. He was an active volunteer for Friends of the Marin County Free Library, editing its newsletter for seven years. For years, he volunteered one day a week at St. Vincent de Paul’s dining room in San Rafael.
Daughter Jean remembers him as a competitive Scrabble player and duck hunter. He belonged to the Anopheles, Pig Wallow and Tip End duck clubs.
He described himself as a tall man who “bumped his head a lot.”
William Hamilton, whose “Now Society” cartoons Arnold published, says he was “kind to everyone, except to ducks.”
William German of Mill Valley, editor of the Chronicle, says Arnold was “a very important ingredient in our newspaper’s growth. He was just better than anyone I’ve ever known at spotting potential in a newspaper feature. He had a rare understanding of the public pulse.”
Cartoonist Larson remembers his first encounter with Arnold in the summer of 1979: “I dropped off my portfolio, and three days later he called me. His first words were ‘You’re sick,’ and for a moment my stomach turned. Then he said ‘I really love your work.’” The Chronicle published “The Far Side” for five years before it was syndicated by Universal Features.
“He was the greatest guy in the world, so warm, so real,” Larson says. On a recent visit to Seattle, Jane complemented Larson on the beauty of his home. “Stan did this,” she quotes Larson as saying.
“Stan was a prince,” says cartoonist Frank, “a rare one in the cartoon syndicate world, which focuses principally on numbers; Stan always focused on quality.”
Others Arnold discovered and helped to promote included Dan Piraro, author of “Bizarro”’ Dan O’Neil, author of “Odds Bodkins,” and caricaturist Kerry Waghorn. He was the first editor west of the Mississippi to retain Garry Trudeau, author of “Doonesbury.”
Marin photographer Hal Lauritzen, Arnold’s hunting buddy of 20 years, calls him a gentleman. “He would always say, ‘You shoot first,’ or ‘You take the seat with the better view.’ In Stan, chivalry was not dead.” Arnold also could “find something funny in the most miserable situation,” Lauritzen said.
“He was the man you wanted to stand next to at a party,” German says.
“Animals and children loved him,” says Jean.
Arnold is survived by his wife, and three daughters: Jean, a teacher at San Quentin Prison and at one time the first woman engineering officer in the U.S. Merchant Marine; Ann Arnold of Berkeley, a painter and illustrator, and Geordie Miller of Ithaca, N.Y., a singer and composer of liturgical music. He also is survived by two grandchildren.
Services will be at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Ross at 11 a.m. June 7.
Memorial donations may be made to the Save the Redwoods League, 114 Sansome St., Room 605, San Francisco 94104; the St. Vincent de Paul Society Dining Room, Box 150527, San Rafael 94915; or Hospice of Marin, 150 Nellen Ave., Corte Madera 94925.
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