Jerry Odom Bellune

Editor Jerry Odom Bellune said he wanted his obituary to read: "Much-feared editor expires."

When Jerry Bellune lost his hair, his enemies wondered where he hid his horns.

Bellune was born in Greenville, SC, the son of Dr. A.E. Bellune and Marion Elizabeth Odom Bellune. He was a graduate of The Baylor School, a military school at the time, in Chattanooga, TN. After two years service in the U.S. Army as a United Nations peacekeeper in South Korea, he worked as an editor at The Greenville News and attended Furman University but left for a job as an editor at the Charlotte, N.C. News.

At The State newspaper in Columbia, he met his wife, Mary MacLeod Hardy, a graduate of the University of South Carolina. They were married more than 61 years. He has worked as an editor at 23 daily and weekly newspapers. As executive editor of the Courier Post in Cherry Hill, NJ, he launched a Sunday edition. In 1979, the newspaper published articles on malfeasance in a monastic order that won the Pulitzer Prize.

He has reported from the White House, the United Nations, and the Middle East.

He liked to joke that he sounded like a guy who could not hold a job. Bellune has coached editors and reporters at more than two dozen newspapers across the country and edited four magazines. In 1984, he and his wife bought a failing weekly newspaper, The Dispatch News in Lexington, SC. They turned it into a highly profitable, award-winning newspaper.

After disagreements with their majority partners, the Bellunes left The Dispatch News and launched the Lexington County Chronicle in 1992. After nine years of competition between the two local newspapers, the owner of  The Dispatch News sold them his newspaper.

In 2006, Bellune semi-retired from the Chronicle and his son, Mark succeeded him as editor.

In retirement, Bellune started Riverbanks Press publishing books and self-study courses.

Bellune is a former president of the NJ Associated Press Managing Editors Association and the South Carolina Press Association and has been named its Journalist of the Year. He served as a board member of the Carolinas chapter of the National Speakers Association and Toastmaster International, where he helped establish three chapters and served as president and area governor.

He was a long-suffering fan of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks.

Survivors include his wife, MacLeod and sons, David and Mark.

He donated his body to the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. No services are planned, but a celebration of life will be held at a later date.