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Diversification Program Initiated EXCEPT FOR TIMING, the death of John F. Fitzpatrick occurred precisely as he would have planned it had he possessed the power to dictate the manner of his exit. For he had more than a normal horror of becoming incapacitated and living on. Thus, a nine-hole round of golf in the morning, an afternoon watching the finish of the Utah Open Tournament and greeting golfing friends, a return to his home in the evening for dinner and a sudden lapse into the oblivion of death was the perfect script for the kind of exit he would have preferred. But it was a disconcerting and shocking experience for his family and associates. His successor, John W. Gallivan, was in San Francisco taking care of a business assignment delegated to him by Fitzpatrick. The parting instruction to Gallivan the morning of his departure had been a jocular expression of a serious idea. Fitzpatrick had on several occasions expressed the conviction that a newspaper based upon The Tribune formula would succeed in the San Francisco market. So, as Gallivan was walking to a car to go to the airport, Fitzpatrick called out: "Hey, Jack, buy the Chronicle while you are down there." 1 It was the last contact Gallivan ever had with John F. Fitzpatrick. On Sunday evening, September 11, I960, a telephone call from Fitzpatrick's son Joe, informed him of the sudden and unexpected death. By getting a plane to delay take-off fifteen minutes, The Tribune's new publisher was able to get back 386
