Peter Keller, who died Tuesday at age 87, was a long-serving editor at the Wall Street Journal whose gruff-mannered approach fed rumors that he was the model for television’s Lou Grant.

Keller worked his way up from being a makeup editor in the Journal’s composition room to copyreader and slot man before being named night news editor in 1966. He held that job for 25 years. Keller fully retired only after the September 11, 2001, attacks rendered the World Financial Center unusable and the Journal’s headquarters was moved to Jersey City, N.J. He was the longest serving editorial employee, with 56 years of service, his daughter, Lisa Keller, said.

Keller was born in Brooklyn, the son of Polish immigrants. His father was a tailor, and during the Depression the family had such trouble making ends meet that they moved to Baltimore to live with relatives. They returned for Keller’s high school years, and he attended Samuel Tilden High School in Brooklyn; his yearbook noted prizes for writing.

Keller attended City College at night while holding a job working at a dump with the city Sanitation Department. He later told chilling tales of finding the bodies of babies that had been discarded like so much refuse, Lisa Keller recalled.

At City College, Keller had originally intended to become an accountant, but changed direction after he began editing the night session newspaper, the Reporter. He was fond of publishing provocative articles, like one titled, “Hosannas for the Hallway Abelards and Heloises,” about romance in the tenements. When he was drafted into the Army during World War II, Keller turned over the editorship to a bright young woman named Norma Schwartz. They married while he was on furlough in 1945.

Keller served as a warrant officer with the 5th Army Division in Africa and was awarded the Bronze Star. One of the occasional short stories – pieces of fiction based in fact – that he wrote about significant times in his life concerned a harrowing trip aboard a trans-Atlantic troop ship that ran aground in stormy weather and was forced to return to New York harbor. With euphony characteristic of a headline writer, he titled it, “Calamity Convoy.”

Back in New York after the war, Keller quickly found work at the Journal assembling the paper in the noisy confines of the composition room. He soon came to the attention of the editorial department, but his experience of newspaper production work made him a useful resource in the 1960, when the Journal began printing via facsimile transmission at a new press in Chicopee Falls, Mass. In 1974, the plant became the first to utilize satellite technology to transfer page images from composition room to the press.

“I came to the Journal in 1983 and Pete was an institution,” the managing editor, Paul Steiger, said. “He had a voice that would penetrate a safe, a wonderful, stentorian voice.”

In a memo circulated yesterday at the Journal, copy editor Cathy Panagoulias said, “If the story lacked appropriate comment or got bogged down in financial jargon, Pete would yell out to a copy messenger to get the offending scribe on the phone. The ensuing interrogation, which started off gruffly before (usually) settling into gentle instruction, could be heard by every copy editor. And that’s a key way that several generations of editors learned their craft.”

After attempting to retire in 1990, Keller quickly returned to work. “He had no other hobbies,” Lisa Keller said. “His daughters were his life focus.”

The funeral is set for tomorrow at noon at Temple Israel of New Rochelle.

Peter Keller

Born May 16, 1917, at Brooklyn; died January 4 at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York of heart failure; survived by his wife, Norma, daughters Lisa Keller and Nina Keller, and three grandchildren.