37 Facts About Otis Chandler

Otis Chandler was the publisher of the Los Angeles Times between 1960 and 1980, leading a large expansion of the newspaper and its ambitions.

Otis Chandler was the fourth and final member of the Chandler family to hold the paper's top position.

Chandler's family owned a stake in the newspaper since his great-grandfather Harrison Gray Otis joined the company in 1882, the year after the Los Angeles Daily Times began publication.

Otis Chandler was the son of Norman Chandler, his predecessor as publisher, and Dorothy Buffum Chandler, a patron of the arts and a Regent of the University of California.

Otis Chandler was raised to share his family's distaste for labor unions, a tradition that favored the family's financial interests.

Times editorial page editor Anthony Day observed that Otis Chandler "had been raised to be a prince".

Later, Otis Chandler said his motivation to invest in The Times' quality could be attributed, at least in part, to his desire to combat the East Coast opinion that, "The Times was regarded as a bad newspaper from a hick town".

Otis Chandler attributed his pursuit of solo athletics like shotputting and weightlifting to the same sources, saying, "No one could say that the team carried me or that the coach put me in because my name was Otis Chandler".

Otis Chandler was raised on a 10-acre citrus ranch in Sierra Madre owned by his parents.

At the age of 8, Otis Chandler was thrown to the ground during a horseback riding lesson.

Otis Chandler's mother rushed him to a hospital, where doctors initially reported he was dead.

Otis Chandler's mother rushed him to a second hospital, where a doctor she knew revived him with an adrenaline shot to the heart.

Otis Chandler first attended the Polytechnic School in Pasadena, often making his commute by bicycle.

At the time he enrolled at Phillips, Otis Chandler weighed 155 pounds.

Otis Chandler enrolled at his parents' alma mater, Stanford University, in 1946.

On his 23rd birthday, Otis Chandler proposed to his college sweetheart, Marilyn Brant, on the seventh hole of the Pebble Beach golf course.

Otis Chandler visited The Times frequently as a child, sliding down chutes that were used to drop papers to delivery trucks.

Otis Chandler started work right away as a pressroom apprentice on the graveyard shift.

Otis Chandler's father made sure that Chandler experienced work in all sections of the organization, assigning him to jobs in the industrial production of the paper, business management, clerical administration, and the news-gathering operation.

Otis Chandler quickly increased the budget of the paper, allowing it to expand its coverage.

When Otis Chandler took the job, the paper had only two outside offices.

In 1966 Otis Chandler received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College.

Otis Chandler retired as publisher in 1980 at the age of 52 to become chairman of Times Mirror, reducing his involvement in the day-to-day operations of the company.

In 1986, Otis Chandler won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism to honor his years of service to the newspaper.

Otis Chandler handed control of the paper to people outside the family in the mid-1980s and threw himself into other interests such as the Chandler Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife in Oxnard, California, which he founded in 1987.

Otis Chandler re-entered the public eye in 1999 when he publicly criticized the LA Times for creating a special issue of its Sunday magazine dedicated to the new Staples Center in downtown LA when the paper shared a financial interest in the property.

Otis Chandler was not involved in negotiations by other members of the Chandler family to sell The Times to Tribune Company, a clear sign of how his influence had eroded.

Regardless, Otis Chandler welcomed the outcome, largely because of his dissatisfaction with the existing management of Times-Mirror.

Otis Chandler died at his home in Ojai at the age of 78 due to the effects of Lewy body disease, seven months after his diagnosis.

Otis Chandler had had earlier problems with his health, suffering from prostate cancer in 1989 and a 1998 heart attack.

Otis Chandler was an enthusiastic athlete and thrill seeker, an image he actively cultivated.

In 1990, Otis Chandler was trampled by a musk ox in the Northwest Territories of Canada.

Doctors estimated that his dislocated right arm would never fully heal, but, citing a disciplined training regimen, Otis Chandler claimed to regain virtually all use.

Otis Chandler lost part of the big toe on his left foot, saw another toe severely damaged and the rest of the foot became largely numb.

In 1998, at age 71, Otis Chandler suffered minor head injuries when he spun out a Ferrari automobile on the road in Oxnard.

Otis Chandler's son, Mike Chandler, was a race-car driver in the CART Championship Car series.

Otis Chandler enthusiastically supported Michael's racing career until a near-fatal crash while qualifying at Indianapolis in 1984.