DR. HUNTER PELL McCARTNEY

Dr. Hunter Pell McCartney, 83, died Monday, Mar. 5, 2007.

He was born at Index, the 15th child of 19 fathered by Sylvanus Armstrong McCartney and the eighth of 12 born to Sylvanus and Alice Goff McCartney. He attended a one-room school in Gilmer County and graduated from Tanner High School. After attending Glenville State College for one year, he earned his AB from West Virginia University and his MA and PhD degrees from University of Pennsylvania. He was a schoolteacher and former employee of General Electric, Burroughs, and IBM.

He was a former combat infantryman with the 36th Armored Infantry Regiment of the Third Armored Division during World War II and was involved in five military campaigns in the European Theater of Operations: Normandy, Northern France, Central Europe, Ardennes (Bulge), and Ruhr Valley. He was discharged as a sergeant and was later commissioned in the U.S. Army Reserve and discharged as a captain.

A professor of journalism at West Virginia University for 22 years, he was head of the Public Relations Dept. until retiring in 1989, and was active in national public relations and journalism organizations, holding offices and contributing to professional journals. He was twice named outstanding educator in Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism.

An elder and trustee of First Presbyterian Church, Morgan-town, he was a past board member of the local Red Cross chapter, Monongalia County Historical Society, Shack Neighborhood House, and Meals On Wheels program, where he was a volunteer driver for many years. He was a past member of Tau Kappa Epsilon social fraternity, and BPOE, and a member of Morgan-town Rotary Club, where he was a multiple Paul Harris Fellow.

In 1950, he married Diane Ferry, who died of cancer in 1996, after 46 years of marriage. They had four children, Deborah and James, both of Morgantown, Nancy of Raleigh, N.C., and Alice of Greensboro, N.C.; four grandchildren; and one great-grandson. In 1998, he married Betty Pingley Crickard of Morgantown, who is the mother of Jennifer Crickard Tschetter and one granddaughter of Brookings, S.D.

Also surviving are two sisters, Myrtle Roberts of Stumptown and Margaret Kent of Machipongo, Va., and two brothers, Sull McCartney of Glenville and Donald McCartney of Stumptown.