With his words, H. Marlin Landwehr, the former editor-in-chief of the Daily Southtown, was a persuasive voice for residents of Chicago’s Southwest Side and an advocate for community development, including the rebirth of Midway Airport and the preservation of the city’s last working farm.
“He believed strongly that a good newspaper should be an advocate for the community,” said a longtime friend and colleague, Phil Kadner, associate editor and columnist at the Daily Southtown.
Mr. Landwehr, 83, of Elmhurst, died of colon cancer Monday, Jan. 8, in St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minn.
Through his editorials, he urged the city to invest in Midway Airport, which in the 1970s had been abandoned by the airlines in favor of O’Hare International Airport. He wrote persuasive arguments that helped invigorate the local airport industry and the area’s deteriorating business district, Kadner said.
He also encouraged the city to save a farm at 111th Street and Pulaski Road and campaigned for its development as a magnet school, the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences.
As a teenager, Mr. Landwehr knew he would pursue a career in newspapers, said his son Jim. “He loved being a newspaper man. He liked to talk to people one-on-one. He was a good listener,” he said.
Mr. Landwehr grew up in Northbrook and graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In 1939 he began his journalism career as a reporter for the City News Bureau in Chicago. A few years later, he took a job as a reporter and later as an editor for the Garfieldian, a neighborhood weekly on the city’s West Side, said his son.
He joined the Navy in 1942, served for three years and, after the war, returned to work as editor for the Garfieldian. In the mid-1960s, he took a job as editor overseeing more than a dozen local weeklies and twice-weeklies owned by the Southtown Economist.
In 1978, after the Chicago Daily News folded, the Southtown became a daily newspaper. Mr. Landwehr helped transform the newspaper group into a consolidated newspaper, Kadner said.
The soft-spoken editor was the antithesis of the Hollywood city editor image.
“He was very patient, especially with young, inexperienced journalists. He was very good-natured. It took a lot to get him riled. And I rarely saw him riled,” said Richard Wronski, a Tribune editor who worked for Mr. Landwehr in the late 1970s.
“He had a tremendous sense of what was important to a community. He was not the traditional movie version of a screaming city editor. He was quite caring and quite helpful to the young reporters that came to work for him,” said Bruce Sagan, former publisher of the Daily Southtown and current publisher of the Hyde Park Herald.
Mr. Landwehr retired in 1982 but continued working in the community. He volunteered in a Meals on Wheels program, delivering meals to senior citizens. And he remained active, playing tennis until he was 80, said his son.
Mr. Landwehr is also survived by his wife, Carolyn; another son, Carl; a daughter, Barbara; a sister, Alice Spreyer; and six grandchildren.
Visitation is scheduled for 4 to 9 p.m. Friday in Ahlgrim Funeral Home, 567 Spring Rd., Elmhurst. A service is planned for 3 p.m. Saturday in First Congregational United Church of Christ, 235 S. Kenilworth Ave., Elmhurst.