Warbird Information Exchange

Herald-Tribune publisher David Lindsay Jr. figured the best way to see how a phosphate mine ravaged the environment was to fly right over one.

Lindsay, publisher of the Herald-Tribune from 1955 to 1982, was an aviation enthusiast who would take visitors, reporters, and stakeholders up in his Cessna 310 and fly over the mines to show them the ugly layer cake of sediment left behind.

That outrage seeped into the newspaper stories about the mining industry, drawing statewide attention and leading to tighter regulations from the state.

Lindsay, whose father founded the newspaper that later became the Herald-Tribune, died Thursday at home in Sarasota. He was 86 and had been in declining health in recent years from Parkinson's disease.

He sold the newspaper to the New York Times Co. in 1982.

"I would say that his name is one of the few that can be mentioned in the same sentence as the Ringlings and the Palmers as far as influence in Sarasota," said Waldo Proffitt, a long-time Herald-Tribune editor who worked alongside Lindsay for 20 years.

Though seldom seen in the newsroom or at black-tie events, Lindsay was influential in politics, the environment and numerous other issues during an era when Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties were experiencing some of their most rapid growth.

"He chose not to be the spokesman for these things, but rather to support the people who were," said Bob Lindsay, one of his four children.

Under David Lindsay's leadership, the Herald-Tribune became the largest news organization in Southwest Florida and opened news bureaus in Venice, Bradenton and Port Charlotte.

It was the area's largest private employer and one of its leading political voices, as thousands of readers clipped out the newspaper's endorsements and copied them onto their ballots on Election Day.

"Anybody who had any power in Sarasota got the hard end of the news from the Herald-Tribune," said former state Sen. Bob Johnson, of Sarasota.

Herald-Tribune Publisher Diane McFarlin, who began working for Lindsay as a reporter, called him "a titan of the Florida newspaper industry" who championed causes that had far-reaching effects while maintaining a low profile.

"There was an aura of mystery around him," McFarlin said. "I never witnessed this, but I was told that he would drive into a private garage each morning and go by elevator to his suite of offices on the second floor.

"Looking back, I suspect that this routine was the result of his natural reserve. He was not a man who sought the spotlight."

Born in Fayetteville, N.C., on Christmas Day 1922, he was the only son of David Breed Lindsay and Helen Dodson Lindsay.

He graduated from the Woodberry Forest School in Virginia in 1941 and enlisted in the U.S. Army the following year.

After serving in the Pacific Theater during World War II, he received a bachelor's degree from Purdue University in Indiana in 1947 and completed his military service as a first lieutenant in the Army Reserve in 1950.

The Lindsays had always been newspapermen.

Lindsay Sr. learned the business under his father, George, the publisher and editor of the Chronicle and the Leader-Tribune in Marion, Ind., in the 1920s.

Lindsay Sr. ran newspapers in Indiana and North Carolina before World War I, but enlisted and was sent to Arcadia to set up military training fields.

It is said that Lindsay Sr. first spotted Sarasota from the open cockpit of a biplane and would fly in on weekends during leave from the Army. He returned to Indiana after the war, worked for his father's newspaper and performed around the country with a group of barnstorming pilots, saving enough money to purchase the Fayetteville Observer in North Carolina in 1921.
Two years later, Lindsay Sr. moved to Florida and bought an interest in the St. Petersburg Times. By 1925, Lindsay Sr. and his brother, Dick, set their sights on Sarasota, opening the Sarasota Herald in a building on Orange Avenue.

In 1938, the Lindsays bought the rival Sarasota Tribune and changed the masthead to the Herald-Tribune.

David Lindsay Jr. came to Florida in 1948.

At the time he was a reporter, photographer and advertising salesman in Marion, Ind., but moved to Sarasota and became the editor and general manager.

The father and son shared duties for seven years, until Lindsay Sr. grew ill and was forced to retire in 1955. He continued to visit the newspaper offices almost daily until he died in 1968.
His father's death -- from smoking-related cancer -- shaped Lindsay Jr.'s decision to become one of the first newspaper publishers to refuse cigarette advertisements.

"That cost us several millions of dollars," said Proffitt, the former editor.

As the population in Sarasota County doubled from 1960 to 1970, Lindsay Jr. was named one of the most powerful men in Florida by Florida Trend Magazine. The newspaper expanded and its publisher became a staunch environmentalist, years before the word entered the nation's lexicon.

Lindsay's concerns about damage to the state's fragile coastline from dredge-and-fill operations in the 1960s led to passage of a state law curtailing the practice.

The newspaper's editorial pages also urged local politicians to modernize the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport instead of building a new one east of the interstate.
Lindsay's interest in phosphate mining started when he saw the devastation caused by mining operations across Central Florida. When a firm tried to move into Sarasota County, Lindsay made it a point to explain all the potential hazards to local voters.

Reporter Allan H. Horton was new to the paper in 1979 and was immediately thrust into the phosphate stories.

The newspaper flew Horton to every mine in the state and as far as Idaho to file stories about the industry almost daily. The newspaper published a 16-page special edition on mining operations and Lindsay took a CBS News crew on a tour of the phosphate industry for a segment of "60 Minutes."

"We're not engaged in an advocacy position with the phosphate industry," he once said when the mining operations complained of his newspaper's coverage.

"We're just telling the story."

Lindsay eventually met with President Gerald Ford to ask for a study of the environmental impact of the Central Florida mines. A few days later, Ford asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take a look.

"The phosphate industry called me the 'slime editor,'" said Horton, now retired. "You can't print what they called Mr. Lindsay."

He served as president of the Florida Daily Newspapers Association in the early 1950s and president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation a decade later.

Lindsay Newspapers Inc. also started an afternoon paper, the Sarasota Journal, that was published for 30 years until it folded in 1982, shortly before he sold the company.

"He was the last Herald-Tribune publisher to preside over typewriters and Linotype machines," McFarlin said. "His passing at a time of sweeping change in our industry is especially poignant."
Lindsay also was a founding trustee of Sarasota's pioneering New College in 1950 and remained on its board of trustees for more than two decades.

An aviation enthusiast, Lindsay was an experienced pilot who was passionate about airplane design and experimental aircraft.

As president of the Cavalier Aircraft Corp. from 1956 to 1971, he was involved in modifying the P-51D Mustang fighter plane for use by the Air Force, foreign military clients and individuals.

He also designed, built and was the test pilot of the original prototype of the Enforcer, a close-support plane in combat operations. His prototype is housed at the Air Force's national museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

In addition to his son Bob, he is survived by two other sons, David G.B. and Ed; a daughter, Ann Curtis; and nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

A memorial service is planned for 1 p.m. Aug. 15 at The Church of the Redeemer in Sarasota.
Memorial donations may be made to the Woodberry Forest School, 898 Woodberry Forest Road, Woodberry Forest, VA 22989; or the New College Foundation, 5800 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota, FL 34243.