This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
On June 30, 1956, a typical quiet Saturday, reporters and editors routinely worked putting out Sunday's Salt Lake Tribune .
Part of the job involved checking teletype machines. When a report came around 3 p.m. that a plane was missing out of Los Angeles, few gave it a second thought. But, when news of a second missing plane surfaced, managing editor Jim England went to work.
England, who died Saturday at age 93, would lead a team of reporters and editors who covered a midair collision over the Grand Canyon between a TWA Super Constellation and a United DC-7 that killed 128 people. The reporting effort led to The Tribune winning its only Pulitzer Prize.
"I figured Jim more or less won the prize," recalled Bob Blair, a rewrite reporter involved in the coverage. "He made the quick decisions. Jim did things and didn't worry about the consequences."
Mike Korologos, a former Tribune editor and reporter and now an advertising executive, was working as a copy boy on that fateful day. He remembered England as a dapper dresser who liked convertible cars and was almost casual when a big story hit.
"He rallied the troops and got the people down there," recalled Korologos about England's work on the Grand Canyon plane crash. "I remember the lead on that article written by Bob Alkire. 'I have just come from the scene of the worst air disaster in the nation's history.' The excitement in the newsroom was incredible. It was quiet and intense with no joking around while we were putting it all together."
England ran the photo the whole length of the page on the second day of the story.
"That was pretty spectacular for those days, but it wouldn't amount to much these days," Blair recalled.
England's son Breck remembered his father interviewing presidents like Eisenhower.
"When I was a little boy, he would take me into The Tribune building and [sports editor] John Mooney would poke me with a pipe, [columnist] Dan Valentine would muss my hair and we would go to Lamb's for lunch with [business editor] Bob Woody. Once, when I was 7 or 8 years old, I was in the office when this big tall guy with red hair and a red face came in. It was John F. Kennedy, but I didn't know who it was."
Breck remembered when his father, an avid fly fisher, met Ernest Hemingway on the Gray's River but couldn't land an interview. He said England needed to convince then- Tribune editor Arthur Deck that it would be a good idea to buy the "Peanuts" comic strip. Deck was convinced the strip would not be popular.
England liked to tell the story of how the paper scooped the Deseret News when LDS Church President George Albert Smith died. When it appeared that the death was imminent, there was only one pay phone at the hospital and England had the reporter stay on the line so The Tribune could get a special edition on the streets first.
England worked at The Tribune from 1945 to 1958 before spending a year as the editor of the Idaho Statesman in Boise, then returning to Utah as head of public relations for Eimco.
He is survived by his wife of 71 years Afton; children Barbara Manfull, Robert, Breck and Jeffrey; 16 grandchildren; 33 great-grandchildren; and one great-great-grandchild.
A viewing is scheduled Thursday from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. at the Bountiful 21st Ward, 115 Wicker Lane, with the funeral following at 11 a.m.