Alvah H. Chapman Jr., a third-generation newspaperman and former Bradenton resident, died on Christmas at the age of 87.
Mr. Chapman, born March 21, 1921, in Columbus, Ga., moved to Bradenton at the age of 5 when his father, Alvah H. Chapman Sr., was named publisher of The Evening Herald, which eventually was renamed The Bradenton Herald.
The former publisher of The Miami Herald and CEO of Knight-Ridder Newspapers was the grandson of R.W. Page, whose company owned the Herald before selling to Knight Newspapers Inc.
A graduate of Bradenton High School, where he was quarterback on the football team, Mr. Chapman went on to attend The Citadel in South Carolina.
After graduating from college in 1942 with a degree in business administration, Mr. Chapman joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, becoming a B-17 pilot during World War II.
Mr. Chapman worked for his grandfather’s newspaper in Columbus before venturing out on his own and, at one stage of his career, was vice president and general manager of the St. Petersburg Times.
He eventually moved to Miami to become publisher of The Miami Herald and then CEO of Knight-Ridder, owner of the Bradenton Herald before the Bradenton Herald was purchased by The McClatchy Company newspaper chain in 2006.
“He had a very distinguished career in Dade County,” former state Sen. Ed Price said of his friend. “He was a really fine man and excellent newspaperman.
“A lot of his time was spent working for civic and social causes, especially children and the homeless,” Price said. “But he never blew his horn about it. He was always humble about the things he did.”
Price said Mr. Chapman also left a real footprint growing up in Manatee County.
Bradenton Mayor Wayne Poston, a former executive editor of the Bradenton Herald, said Mr. Chapman always cared what happened in his hometown.
“He made sure the Herald was the best it could be,” Poston said. “He was a regular reader of the paper, because I would get calls from him about something he saw in the paper.”
Former Herald publisher Dot Ridings, also remembers Mr. Chapman as being concerned about the future of his local paper and the community.
“My memory of Alvah was he cared so much about his community, which included Bradenton as much as Miami, that when I was hired as the first woman publisher of the Herald, he worried about how I would fare in what he knew was a town ran by powerful men,” Ridings said. “At the end of the interview I recall so well, he said I would do just fine and that I would ‘tie them up in pink ribbons’.”
Mr. Chapman’s civic activism was renowned throughout Florida and the nation, as well as the Miami-Dade metropolitan area.
That kind of recognition does not surprise Bradenton resident Gene Page, Mr. Chapman’s cousin.
“He was a newspaperman all his life,” Page said, “but he also was a great philanthropist, especially in Miami where he helped the homeless.”
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