Don E. Carter

1917 - 2017

Don Carter, career newspaperman and resident of Sea Island, Ga., died of complications from a fall on Wednesday, three months shy of his 100th birthday.
A funeral service will be held at St. Simons First Presbyterian Church where Carter was a longtime member, Saturday, March 25, 2017 at 11 a.m.
Carter, a cousin of former President Jimmy Carter, graduated from the University of Georgia in 1938 and began his career at The Atlanta Journal, initially covering the farm beat, which was big in the then largely agricultural state.
In 1942, he left the paper for service in the U.S. Army in China and other theaters.
He was back at the paper after the war and moved into management as the Journal's city editor. He returned to his alma mater while city editor, recruiting journalism students for internships and permanent jobs at the newspaper.
In 1958, Dow-Jones created the Newspaper Fund, offering fellowships to high school journalism teachers, later also providing money for newspaper internships. Carter was hired as the fund's first director, a job he held from 1959 to 1962.
Dow-Jones created The National Observer, a weekly newspaper reviewing and analyzing the week's news, in 1962, and Carter moved to Washington so he could become its managing editor.
Newspaper leadership jobs followed at The Record in Hackensack, N.J., The Macon Telegraph and News and The Lexington (Ky.) Herald Leader.
In the late 1970s, Carter, a one-time president of the Associated Press Managing Editors organization, relocated to Miami to become vice president for news for Knight-Ridder. He retired from that job in 1982 at age 65.
Carolyn McKenzie Carter, his wife of more than 60 years, died in 2010.