From staff reports
William Lander, formerly the oldest living Chronicle editor and the "father of the Blue Devil," died March 13 in New York City.
Lander, who served as editor of The Trinity Chronicle in 1923, was 89.
Lander's career as a journalist spanned the world. In the early days of Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency, he worked in the United Press International's Washington bureau covering the New Deal legislative action.
Later, as an international reporter, Lander covered a wide range of topics, including the Cuban revolution in the mid-1930s, the Spanish Civil War at the end of the decade and the drafting of the charter of the United Nations in 1945.
In 1986, Lander gave the University about 3,000 clippings, more than half of which are in Spanish, from his days at UPI.
Lander was perhaps best known in University history as the founder of the Blue Devil. In fall 1923, after a contest to pick the name of the school's mascot ended in about a 10-way deadlock, Lander said later, the paper began naming Trinity College teams the Blue Devils.
In a 1986 interview with The Chronicle, Lander said: "Years later I came here and I saw this guy dancing around, a cheerleader with a tail and a pitchfork and I thought `My God, did I start that?'"
Lander graduated with a master's degree in history from Trinity College in 1924.
Law professor dies: Arthur Larson, a James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Law and an authority on workers' compensation, died Saturday at his Durham home. He was 82.
Larson came to the University in 1958 after serving as undersecretary of labor, director of the U.S. Information Agency and as special assistant in charge of speeches to President Eisenhower.
For several years at the University, he headed the Law School's Rule of Law Research Center. The center participated in early efforts to make contact with the Soviets through a series of Soviet-American citizens' conferences.
Larson's continued involvement in Washington included the moderation of Capitol HIll conferences on public policy issues. He is survived by two children, a brother, a sister and six grandchildren.
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