Roul Tunley

Roul Tunley, whose career as a writer and editor of books, magazines and newspaper stories spanned nearly 70 years, died Monday. He was 97.

Tunley wrote in his 2005 autobiography, "To Be a Journalist," that he graduated from Yale University knowing only that he wanted to travel.

He worked a variety of jobs and visited Europe, Mexico and Guatemala before joining the Navy. He served in Morocco during World War II and afterwards took a job teaching English for a year at Yale.

Then, he wrote in his autobiography, he had an "epiphany in an editor's office" and went on to a career as a "late-blooming magazine writer and editor."

Tunley got his start in journalism as a reporter for the New York Herald-Tribune in 1934, according to Who's Who in America.

After his time teaching at Yale, he worked at Look Magazine before stints as staff writer and associate editor at American Magazine from 1951 to 1956.

Next he joined Woman's Home Companion as assistant managing editor and eventually went on to become associated editor at the Saturday Evening Post.

Tunley, a resident of Stockton, N.J. at the time, bought a house in South Florida in 1978.

In 1999 he moved into a condo on Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach, where he lived and worked until his death.

Staff researcher Sammy Alzofon contributed to this story.