Former BJ editor Dale Allen passed away.

He came to the BJ from the Philadelpia Inquirer in 1980. He was at Ol’ Blue Walls when it won its 3^rd Pulitzer in 1987 for its coverage of the greenmail takeover attempt of Goodyear and the 4^th Pulitzer for the 1994 “A Question of Color” race relations series.

John S. Knight won a Pulitzer in 1968 for his outspoken opposition to Nixon’s Vietnam War shenanigans and Pat Engelhart led the charge to the 1971 Pulitzer for coverage of the 1970 Kent State shootings by the Ohio National Guard.

William Dale Allen was born in Joplin, Missouri, where he got his first newspaper job, as a reporter for the Joplin Glove in 1957.

He had other stops at the Charlotte Observer and Philly Inquirer before arriving at 44 E. Exchange Street.

I played a role in getting the BJ a $5 million computer improvement from Knight-Ridder. Honchos from Miami were in the building and Dale came to my TV Editor desk and said, “Slow it down, but don’t make it stop.”

He knew that my format for removing some plotlines from the Channels’ movie list slowed down the system. So much so that I wasn’t allowed to do it till after the first edition was clear.

So I kicked in the format, the Miami whizzes saw the slowdown and the BJ got its $5 million improvement to its computer mainframe system.

Dale, Features Editor Jim Nolan and I were the midwives for Channels’  television guide birth in 1980. Channels was killed off in 2014.

Dale was a University of Missouri journalism graduate after a short stay at Joplin Junior College (later Missouri Southern).

Dale married Barbara Bower in 1960. They have three children.

He had been dealing with a brain tumor since April.