George H. Stroud, a retired news employee of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and member of a family long active in newspapering, died on Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010. He was 81 years old.

Mr. Stroud retired in 1990 after working at the Post-Dispatch for about 30 years as a copy editor, wire news editor and makeup editor. A daughter, Jerri Stroud, was a reporter for the paper for 33 years.

A brother, the late Joe H. Stroud, had been editor* of the Detroit Free Press and editor of that paper’s editorial page, and another brother, the late William H. Stroud, was a writer, editor and photographer and later chief of technology for the Philadelphia Inquirer. A nephew, Joseph Scott Stroud (Joe’s son) is a columnist for The Express-News in San Antonio, TX.

Mr. Stroud and his brothers grew up on a cotton farm near McGehee, Ark. He was graduated in 1949 from Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., and went to work at the weekly Lonoke (Ark.) Democrat. Later he worked at the daily Helena (Ark.) World and the Delta Democrat-Times at Greenville, Miss., as a reporter and photographer. From there he moved to the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock, where he was involved in coverage of the 1958-59 desegregation controversy.

  In 1970-71, he studied at Stanford University under a Professional Journalism Fellowship.

Mr. Stroud enjoyed sailing, fishing, canoeing, gardening and hunting, and shared many of these activities with his wife, Madie E. Stroud, a home economist. In later years, he had helped her in testing recipes for the Post-Dispatch food section. He had also been a beekeeper.

In recent years he had been trying to relearn playing the trumpet, taking lessons and playing (not very well, he said) with the After Hours Community Band, the Compton Heights Concert Band, the Meramec Symphonic Band, the New Horizons Band at the Community Music School of Webster University and a church band at the First United Methodist Church of Webster Groves, of which he was a member.

Surviving are his wife; two daughters, Jerri Stroud of Webster Groves and Penny Stroud of Menlo Park, Calif.; three grandchildren, Stephen Saville of Seattle, Robin Pam of San Francisco, and Molly Pam of Menlo Park; and one great-grandaughter, Emily Rae Saville of Seattle. He was preceded in death by a daughter, Marian Stroud.

Family and friends will celebrate his life at a memorial service at 10:30 a.m. Oct. 23 at First United Methodist Church of Webster Groves, 600 North Bompart Ave. They are invited to join the family after the service at a reception and lunch at the church. His ashes will be buried in Tillar, Ark., at a later date.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to the Endowment Fund for Adult Cystic Fibrosis, c/o Lucile Packard Foundation For Children’s Health, 400 Hamilton Ave., Suite 340, Palo Alto, Calif. 94301.

*The title is correct.  Joe’s responsibility extended to the news operations of the Free Press, and he reported frequently on domestic politics and international affairs. See Who’s Who in America in the 1970s and 1980s, and the Editor and Publisher yearbook for those years.