AP's Rory Marshall, Longtime Regional Desk Editor, Dies at 54

By: Rory Marshall, an editor on The Associated Press' West regional desk, died Sunday of complications from lung cancer, family members said. He was 54.

Marshall, a veteran editor with a dry sense of humor, went to work for the AP in Seattle in 1982 after nearly five years at The Bellingham (Wash.) Herald, where he covered the courts and police, became known for a folksy writing style, and eventually was named assistant city editor.

His AP reporting assignments included two major trials in Seattle in the mid- and late 1980s: the federal prosecution of leaders of a violent white supremacist group called The Order; and a lawsuit in which the late Ferdinand Marcos, deposed ruler of the Philippines, and his widow, Imelda, were found liable for the killing of two anti-Marcos union activists.

Marshall was a desk supervisor in Seattle for much of the 1990s. He also was a union shop steward for the News Media Guild, part of The Newspaper Guild, AFL-CIO.

"Rory was one of the princes of the newsroom, an old-school reporter who could handle any assignment thrown at him," said Tim Klass, an AP colleague throughout Marshall's years in the Seattle bureau. "When he was running the desk, reporters knew they were in good hands whether they were rookies or lifers."

Marshall, an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed camping and hiking, was born in Los Angeles and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and in Upper Saddle River, N.J.

He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, then worked for a brief stint in a Manhattan insurance office before returning to the West Coast to work at the Bellingham newspaper.

Marshall transferred to Phoenix in June to work on the AP's new West regional desk.

He is survived his two daughters, Abby Marshall in Las Vegas, and Claire Marshall in St. Paul, Minn.; his mother, Alberta Marshall in Troy, N.Y.; sisters Laurel Cleary in Gig Harbor, Wash., and Fern Bradley in Greenwich, N.Y.; and brother Barry Marshall in Philmont, N.Y.