Frederick Brockway Gleason III
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

One Saturday morning in the fall of 2001, just after news broke that an effort was under way to relaunch The New York Sun, the phone rang in what were then its editorial rooms – actually, editorial room – a basement studio apartment in Brooklyn. It was answered by the managing editor of the paper that was still just an idea. “Is this the Ira Stoll that is re-launching The New York Sun?” went a voice on the other end of the line in a curiously precise voice that turned out to be a unique combination of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Savannah, Georgia.
“Yes, who is calling?” the managing editor replied.
“This is Frederick Brockway Gleason the Third of Greenwich Connecticut, and Savannah, Georgia,” the caller said. “And I represent the family that used to own the Sun.”
At this point came a pause long enough to allow the young editor to imagine that the dream of The New York Sun could become ensnarled in litigation before the paper even had a chance to publish a first issue. But it turned out that Frederick Brockway Gleason III, whose mother’s brother was Thomas Dewart, the last president of the Sun, was calling not to threaten a lawsuit. Rather he was calling to say that he was thrilled at the reports of our plans, to wish us the best of luck, and to say that he had been tasked to offer us some of the family memorabilia.
After the Sun had moved out of the basement in Brooklyn, Gleason became an occasional, and always welcome, visitor to the newsroom. He almost never came empty handed but carried some piece of memorabilia. There was a woodcut by Timothy Cole made from a painting by Frank O. Salisbury of William Dewart, president of the Sun through 1941. Gleason brought a stone on a base indicating it came from the birthplace in Maine of Frank Munsey, the tycoon who owned the paper before the Dewarts. Once he delivered a wooden chest of copies from long-ago issues of the paper. He delivered a minor medal the paper had once been awarded and even a book of the World War I dispatches written for the Sun and the London Daily Telegraph by Rudyard Kipling.
Often he’d also bring less tangible gifts – a story idea, a suggestion for an editorial, or advice on marketing the paper. One got the feeling that there was a streak in Gleason that had never stopped mourning the death of the paper his family once owned and that long stood for principles he still adored. One receives a lot of encouragement when one starts a newspaper, but there was no one who wanted more than Fred Gleason for the Sun to succeed. So it was with a special sadness that we received word yesterday that Gleason had died in Savannah. He lived a full life, as an investment banker, teacher, parent, and an encourager of editors and reporters. He will be missed among those of us who fly the flag of the newspaper he loved so much.