E. T. Leech

Edward Towner Leech (born June 17, 1892 in Denver, Colorado; died December 11, 1949 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania} was a newspaper columnist and editor who sometimes wrote under the psuedonym B. U. L. Conner, a comic character who also appeared in cartoons as a small man with a large nose.

Leech graduated from the University of Colorado in 1914 and was a Delta Tau Delta. He married the former Pauline Bohanna, but they divorced in 1929 after having two children.

While Leech was editor of The Memphis Press, he was jailed for his editorials lambasting the political machine headed by Mayor E. H. Crump. He was a columnist for the Houston Press in 1925 before coming to the Birmingham Post by 1926. That Summer he penned, as Conner, a fanciful column entitled "A Love Story of Vulcan and Electra", narrating the romantic involvement between the Vulcan statue and his newly-installed counterpart, Electra. Before the end of the decade he was serving as publisher of the Post, and led a media campaign against the Ku Klux Klan of the era.

Leech joined the staff of the El Paso Herald Post by 1931 and was editor of The Pittsburgh Press in the 1940s. While there he was known for championing environmental efforts in the industrial metropolis and for publicizing child labor and "sweatshop" conditions. He also hired noted illustrator Nat Youngblood. During he tenure he helped the Press rise to a circulation of over 265,000, making it the most profitable daily in the Scripps-Howard chain.

Leech died at age 57 from complications following a surgical procedure. He is buried at the Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. He was inducted into the Pennsylvania Newspaper Hall of Fame in 1973.

Publications

• Leech, Edward Towner (1949) Utopia on the Rocks : A Report on British Socialism in Action. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh Press

References

• "Ten journalists elected to Hall." (September 6, 1973) New Castle News

External links

• Edward T. Leech at findagrave.com