Dave Hess laid to rest

By Bill Hershey, former BJ Columbus bureau reporter

COLUMBUS, OH – Two military honor guards flanked the flag-draped casket Saturday at the graveside service for David Willard Hess at Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens.

Hess died July 19 after complications from a series of strokes. He was 83. Relatives and friends gathered for the brief service under a clear blue sky.

Celebrant Sean Warren said Hess had the intelligence to pursue any career but chose journalism after being inspired by The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

Hess was a reporter with “instant credibility”, said Warren. Hess was dedicated to righting the wrongs he found in the world, Warren added.

“He looked out for his fellow man,” said Warren.

Hess also served as a mentor to other reporters, Warren said.

He spent a “life of learning” with wide-ranging interests including coins, stamps and books, said Warren.

His serious pursuit of journalism was matched by a ready sense of humor, characterized by belly laughs, said Warren. Hess laughed so loud during the last visit one friend had with him at a suburban Columbus care facility that the people in the next room shut the door to keep out the noise.

Hess, a West Virginia native, earned a bachelor’s degree in geology and a master’s degree in political science from Ohio State University in Columbus. His late father Willard Hess was also a journalist.

Hess moved to Springfield, Va. in 1971 after being named the Washington, D.C. correspondent for the Akron Beacon Journal in the Knight Newspapers – later Knight-Ridder – Washington bureau. He later became a national correspondent for the bureau, covering Congress, the White House and other beats.

He contributed to the coverage of the 1970 shootings of four students at Kent State University by Ohio National Guardsmen that won a Pulitzer Prize for the staff of the Beacon Journal in 1971.

He won other awards, including the Worth Bingham prize for investigative journalism and the grand prize for consumer journalism from the National Press Club. Hess was president of the Press Club in 1985.

Hess moved back to Columbus in 2013 to be with family and friends. Hess’s many friends from his newspaper career were represented by Bill Hershey, a colleague from the Beacon Journal and the Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau, and Lee Leonard, a retired Statehouse reporter for United Press International and the Columbus Dispatch.

Hess served in the U.S. Army during the Korean conflict and also in the U.S. Naval Reserve.

He was preceded in death by his parents and his wife, Dorothea, children, Daniel and Laura, sister Mary Kay Rogers and his ever-loyal pet Boxer, Champ.

He is survived by nephew Darren (Laura) Burnham; nieces, Kathryn Burnham and Mary Lynn (Harry) Hicks; great-nephew Nathan (Molly) Hicks and great nieces, Carly Hicks, Kate Burnham, Kerry Burnham and Bryn Burnham.

A trumpeter played taps as the honor guards folded the American flag and presented it to Hess’s niece, Mary Lynn Hicks.