Longtime Journalist, Publisher and Penn Stater, Sample, Dies at 84
Penn State alumnus George R. Sample Jr., a journalist and newspaper owner whose career spanned more than 60 years, died Wednesday, June 18, at the age of 84. He was born in Curwensville, Pa., in 1924.
In 1946, Sample earned a B.A. in journalism from the College of Communications at Penn State’s University Park campus where he was managing editor of The Collegian newspaper and played lacrosse. Six of his eight children are also Penn State alumni.
In the 1960s, Sample was one of the founders of what would become American Publishing Co., which was later sold to Hollinger International. He served as vice chairman for Hollinger’s American Publishing Co. and was credited with making improvements to the Chicago Sun-Times and the Jerusalem Post. He also created the family-run Sample News Group, which owns two newspapers in Maine and five newspapers in Pennsylvania, and was the longtime publisher of the Corry Journal, where he started working after graduating from college.
Sample is preceded in death by his wife, Janet, who died in 1998 at age 75. In her honor, he endowed the Janet Neff Sample Center for Manners and Civility at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. The goal of the center, which opened in 2002, is to foster a civility-enriched academic experience within the Penn State Behrend community.
The center helps to fund and sponsor programs at Penn State Behrend, including February’s Speaker Series appearance by documentary filmmaker Christopher Quinn and John Bul Dau, one of three Lost Boys of Sudan profiled in Quinn’s prize-winning feature film God Grew Tired of Us.
It also sparked two Penn State Behrend faculty members, Cathy Sargent Mester and Rod L. Troester, to co-write Civility in Business and Professional Communication (Peter Lang Publishing, 2007). Mester, a senior lecturer, and Troester, an associate professor, have both directed the Janet Neff Sample Center for Manners and Civility, and it was their work with the center that convinced them to expand upon the idea of civil communication in professional contexts.
In 1999, Sample was presented with the Penn State Behrend Alumni Fellow Award, which is the most prestigious honor bestowed by the Penn State Alumni Association and is administered in cooperation with Penn State’s academic colleges. Since 1973, the award has been given to a select group of alumni who are leaders in their professional fields.
Sample suffered a stroke several years ago, but still worked every morning at the Corry Journal until earlier this year. He was known for drinking a black cup of coffee and writing all of the newspaper’s headlines. A golf enthusiast, he wrote a column for the newspaper called, “Teed Off by George” where over the years he questioned everything from the role of the FBI to local politicians.
He is survived by his children, and more than a dozen grandchildren. His son, George “Scoop” Sample III, is publisher of The Daily News in Huntingdon, Pa., and son, Mike Sample, is the owner and publisher of The Titusville Herald. Mike Sample earned a B.S. in management from Penn State Behrend.
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, is a comprehensive residential college offering 33 baccalaureate, six associate, four pre-professional and two graduate degree programs with 22 minors to more than 4,400 students. Focused on providing a student-centered environment, Penn State Behrend is the link that connects its students to a major research and land-grant institution on a campus enriched by more than 110 clubs and organizations, 21 NCAA varsity teams and 19 intramural sports.
Penn State Behrend is named as such due to a donation by Mary Behrend, widow of Ernst Behrend, who founded the Hammermill Paper Co. in Erie in 1898. The Behrend family lived on the 400-acre Glenhill Farm, which is the core of the Penn State Behrend campus today.
For more information, visit behrend.psu.edu.