Marjorie E. McLaughlin

Marjorie E. McLaughlin, 89, of Lawrence, KS, died July 4, 2005, at the Lawrence Memorial Hospital of congestive heart failure. She was an integral part of the McLaughlin family that published newspapers in Paola, KS, for 84 years, including a stint as publisher in the 1980s. She was born on May 7, 1916, in Wellington, KS to George E. and Ethel I. Harbaugh, the youngest of three children in the prominent banking family. She excelled in theater, debate and public speaking. In 1934, she graduated from Wellington High School as class valedictorian. Mrs. McLaughlin received a degree in English from the University of Kansas in 1938. She was twice president of her Gamma Phi Beta sorority and a member of Mortar Board. She married Drew McLaughlin, Jr., on October 29, 1938, and moved to Paola where he worked with his parents and sister on The Miami Republican. During the next half century she served as periodic proofreader, copy editor, office manager and eventual publisher after her husband died in 1982. During the Korean War they lived in Washington, D.C., while her husband was in the Navy. They raised two children, Phil McLaughlin of Paola and Susan McLaughlin of Lawrence. They survive her, as do three grandchildren. After retirement from the newspaper company in 1991, she moved to Overland Park. In 2003, she moved to Lawrence. Mrs. McLaughlin was a voracious reader, a sometimes poet and an avid world traveler in her later years. A memorial service will be at 10 a.m. Friday, July 8, at First United Presbyterian Church in Paola. Memorials can be made to the Drew McLaughlin Community Journalism Scholarship Fund at the University of Kansas journalism school. (Arr. Wilson and Son Funeral Home, 305 N. Pearl St., Paola, KS 66071)