Otis Chandler 1927-2006:

Otis Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times from 1960 to 1980, died February 27 of a degenerative illness called Lewy body disease. He was 78. Chandler was the last dominant figure in a newspaper dynasty that had run The Times since 1882, when his great-grandfather Gen. Harrison Gray Otis bought part ownership of the newspaper. The paper was profitable and highly partisan toward pro-business, pro-Republican interests and not highly respected for its journalism. Chandler turned the paper around as David Halberstam wrote in 1979 in The Powers That Be: “No publisher in America improved a paper so quickly and on so grand a scale, took a paper that was marginal in qualities and brought it to excellence as Otis Chandler did.” Chandler is survived by his wife, Bettina, sons, Harry and Michael, daughters, Cathleen Eckhardt and Carolyn Chandler; sister, Camilla Chandler Frost; and 15 grandchildren. His eldest son, Norman, died in 2002.To access a retrospective on Chandler go to: www.latimes.com/chandler.Michael RosenthalPublisher