Lawrence M. Campbell, former Inquirer and Bulletin reporter, and retired city deputy managing director, has died at 95

Lawrence M. Campbell, 95, of Philadelphia, former reporter and rewrite man for The Inquirer and the Bulletin, retired city deputy managing director, and music enthusiast, died Monday, Aug. 22, of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Glendale Uptown Home.

From 1949 to 1972, Mr. Campbell wrote stories about crime, music, and other timely issues, hustled to pay phones to call in scoops on deadline, and later manned the busy night rewrite desk for the competing newspapers.

He worked with Gil Spencer, the future editor of the Daily News, in the 1950s as a copy boy at The Inquirer, and Al Gaudiosi, a 1964 Pulitzer Prize winner in local investigative reporting, in the 1960s as a reporter at the Bulletin. One of his biggest stories was an exclusive for the Bulletin’s Sunday magazine about Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Eugene Ormandy.

He went straight from high school to the Army to The Inquirer as a city desk copy boy, referred to himself only as a “newspaperman” throughout his career, and scoffed if you called him a “journalist.” He was proud to have worked his way up from clerk to cub reporter to The Inquirer’s police beat at the 12th and Pine Streets station, and he left for better pay and hours at the Bulletin in 1962.

“He was one of the best rewrite men in Philadelphia at the time,” said his son, Alan, a retired longtime copy editor at The Inquirer. “He handled all the breaking stuff because he was very fast and very good. He had a great vocabulary because he read so much.”

His son Bob, a former copy boy at the Bulletin and freelance photographer, said: “He found a home at the Bulletin.”

After making friends with acting police captain Frank Rizzo in the 1950s, Mr. Campbell left the Bulletin to join the new city administration as a deputy managing director when Rizzo was elected mayor in 1971. Savvy as a newsman and naturally talented as a writer, he chipped in on some of Rizzo’s speeches and other public statements, lasted two years into Mayor Bill Green’s ensuing tenure, and directed several memorable projects until he retired in 1983.

“He got to see whether he could do a better job than the politicians he had been making fun of,” Alan Campbell said.

One of only two top executives to span the Rizzo and Green administrations — Fire Commissioner Joe Rizzo was the other — Mr. Campbell oversaw preparations for the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations, directed funding to the restoration of the Ryerss Museum and Library in Burholme Park in the late 1970s, and initiated the renovation of previously unused Conversation Hall at City Hall in the early 1980s.

He oversaw practically every city department at one point during his 11 years in government and counted Mayors Joe Clark and Richardson Dilworth, Police Commissioner Tom Gibbons, and longtime Councilmember Thatcher Longstreth as friends and colleagues.

“He told great stories,” Alan Campbell said.

Born Aug. 13, 1927, in Springfield, Ill., Mr. Campbell was 2 when his mother died. His father was a career Navy officer who moved often from station to station, so Mr. Campbell spent much of his youth with his grandparents and later his father at bases in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

He served in Korea with the Army after high school, married Mary Louise Thomas in 1949, and they moved to Philadelphia from Washington after enjoying the Center City sites on their honeymoon there. They had sons Alan, Bob, and Tom, and lived in Rittenhouse Square, Germantown, Kensington, Castor Gardens, and finally Burholme. His wife died in 2012.

Mr. Campbell was a homebody and ardent music fan who spent many evenings listening to his vast collection of records of opera, concertos, and, on occasion, country tunes. He even dipped his toe into rock and roll in the winter of 1967 when he brought home a record that had been recommended by the Bulletin’s music critic.

It was the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and his sons were incredulous. “We thought he lost his mind,” Bob Campbell said.

Mr. Campbell spent a lot of time at the nearby Ryerss Museum and Library since his wife was its longtime librarian and facility supervisor. An avid reader throughout his life, he retired at 55, and his family agonized with him as he went blind over the next 15 years due to macular degeneration.

But he embraced early versions of audio books and other classic recordings, and became an expert audiophile. “He didn’t go to college, so he always learned on the job,” Alan Campbell said. “He just had a knack for things.”

“It came naturally to him,” Bob Campbell said of his father’s success. “He had God-given talent, and he went for it.”

In addition to his sons, Mr. Campbell is survived by five grandchildren, one great-grandchild, and other relatives.

By his request, no services are planned.

Donations in his name may be made to Ryerss Museum and Library, 7370 Central Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19111.