Robert W. Chandler: A Tradition of Community Leadership

The Chandler Center for Community Leadership takes its name from the late Robert W. Chandler, editor of The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon, for 43 years, founder of the Western Communications Inc. newspaper group, and a nationally known journalist, philanthropist and community leader.

Born May 12, 1921, in a small town in California, Bob Chandler graduated from Stanford University and served in the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps during World War II. He held a series of journalistic positions before purchasing and becoming editor of The Bulletin in 1953. That small Central Oregon daily became the flagship of a newspaper group that over the next four decades grew to include eight daily and weekly papers in Oregon and northern California.

As an editor, Bob Chandler was nationally respected for his high journalistic standards and unshakeable integrity. He served on the board of directors of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the American Press Institute, as a Pulitzer Prize juror, as a member of Harvard University's Nieman Fellowships selection committee and as president of the Society of Professional Journalists, America's largest journalism fraternity.

Bob Chandler was equally prominent for his philanthropic and community leadership activities. He served on many state boards, commissions and committees in Oregon, and wrote and worked for the enactment of the legislation that first provided state funding for Oregon's community colleges. Private philanthropic organizations that he supported included The High Desert Museum near Bend and the Oregon Community Foundation, of which he was a board member and chairman.

When Bob Chandler died on July 12, 1996, still at the helm of his beloved Bulletin, tributes poured in from leading journalists and political figures all over the nation. He was succeeded as chairman of the board of Western Communications Inc. by his daughter, Betsy McCool, who as a member of the board of directors of The Chandler Center is helping carry forward the family tradition of community-building and community-based leadership that her father established.