JACK BRANNAN

January 2, 1936 - May 3, 2014 KANSAS CITY, MO Jack Brannan, 78, of Kansas City, MO, an Oklahoma Hall of Fame journalist, died at 3:30 a.m. Saturday, May 3, 2014, at his home in Kansas City. He was born January 2, 1936, at Cincinnati, OH, the only child of Harold Claude and Alma (George) Brannan. Brannan's career in journalism spanned four decades from the 1950s through the 1980s and ranged across the United States and Latin America. When he was elected to the Journalism Hall of Fame in 1999, he was cited for having "achieved excellence in nearly all facets of journalism, from foreign to domestic ? (and) his reputation as `one helluva newsman' continues." For almost 20 years, Brannan was a reporter, sports writer, foreign correspondent, editor and management executive with the United Press International news agency. He joined UPI in Oklahoma City in 1958 after having worked for The Tulsa World, majoring in journalism at the University of Tulsa and then completing two years of Army duty. From Oklahoma City, Brannan moved on in 1960 to manage UPI's Kansas City bureau, then went to Washington, DC in 1964 as a UPI White House and State Department correspondent specializing in foreign policy during the first year of President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration. In 1965, Brannan was named news editor and chief correspondent at UPI's South American headquarters in Buenos Aires, Argentina, beginning a tour as a foreign correspondent during which he reported from countries throughout Latin America. He later was based in Caracas, Venezuela, and was general manager of UPI's Caribbean Division. In the 1970s, Brannan was an assistant foreign news editor and economic and business writer at UPI world headquarters in New York. He later joined the New York Stock Exchange as manager of its news bureau and media communications department. He returned to the newsroom in the late 1980s as an editor on the Los Angeles Times' foreign news desk. Brannan began his career in journalism at the age of 16 when, in 1952, he began work as a "cub" reporter for The Joplin (MO) Globe and then enrolled in Joplin Junior College. The junior college later evolved into Missouri Southern State University and in 2008, Brannan was named as distinguished alumnus of the university. Since retiring in the early 1990s to focus on private investing, Brannan had resided in Kansas City. Brannan has no direct family survivors, though he has several generations of cousins in Overland Park, Parsons, and Wichita, Kansas, and in Fouches, Belgium, the village of his maternal ancestry that he identified and began visiting in 1986. The Funeral Mass will be held at 11 a.m. Thursday, May 8, 2014, at the St. Francis Catholic Church in St. Paul, KS. Burial will be in the St. Francis Cemetery, where his parents and three generations of his grandparents are buried. The family will receive friends from 9 a.m. until service time at the church Thursday. Friends may call at the CARSON-WALL FUNERAL HOME, St. Paul, KS, from 1 until 8 p.m. on Wednesday. Memorials are suggested to the Jack Brannan Scholarship Fund that will be established at Rockhurst High School in Kansas City. These may be left at or mailed to the CARSON-WALL FUNERAL HOME, P.O. Box 272, St. Paul, KS 66771. Online condolences may be left at: www.wallfuneralservices.com