Paul B Hope

Paul B. Hope, veteran Washington journalist, age 96, died peacefully in his sleep of natural causes Monday, February 1, 2021 at home in Hemlock, Ohio.  He was born on January 2, 1925 and lived a long, productive, and successful life.

Paul was a reporter and editorial writer for the Washington Star for 24 years and later was an editorial writer for the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington for 11 years. He retired in 1990.

Paul was the Star’s national political correspondent from 1964 to 1973. He and a colleague, John Barron, won the Polk and Raymond Clapper awards for their investigation in 1964 of the Bobby Baker scandal of President Johnson’s administration. They also won the two top Washington Newspaper Guild awards for their work on that story and were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

He was with Sen. Robert Kennedy when he was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968 after winning the California Democratic presidential primary. He was the chief Star writer for the riotous Democratic convention that followed in Chicago.

Before becoming the Star’s political correspondent, he covered the desegregation battles in the South during 1963. Earlier he covered state politics and the legislature in Maryland.

Paul was a native of Hemlock, Ohio, a Navy veteran of World War II, and a journalism graduate of the Ohio State University. He began his journalistic career at the Alexandria, Va. Gazette in 1950, where he served as a reporter, city editor and assistant managing editor.

He was president in 1983-4 of the Washington chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He was chairman of Springfield, Va.  Boy Scout Troop 859 in 1979. He also held a private airplane pilot’s license.

In 1946, he married Charlotte Corrinne Headley, a native of Washington, D. C. They raised four sons and lived for more than 50 years in Springfield, Va. They moved to Ohio in 2006. Mrs. Hope, an amateur spinner, weaver and painter, and a volunteer docent at Sully Plantation in Fairfax County, died in January 2009.

Paul is survived by four sons, Jan of South Carolina, Roger of Ohio, Jeffrey of Ohio and Christopher of Texas, eight grandchildren and fifteen great grandchildren. 

Friends may call 2:00-8:00 PM on Friday, Feb. 5 at the JE HUMPHREY FUNERAL HOME, 118 W. Walnut Street, SHAWNEE, Ohio 43782.

Mass of Christian burial will be held on Saturday, Feb. 6 at 11:00 AM at St. Bernard Catholic Church in Corning, Ohio with the Father Todd Lehigh serving as celebrant.

He will be buried next to his wife of nearly sixty-three years in Springer Cemetery, near Hemlock.

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