John Reginald “Reg” Murphy, a former Baltimore Sun publisher who once survived a politically motivated kidnapping, died Nov. 9 at his St. Simons Island home in Georgia. The former Inner Harbor and Caves Valley resident was 90.

“He had a 90-year-old body that just gave out,” said his wife, Diana Mather Murphy.

Born in Hoschton, Georgia in 1934, and raised in Gainesville, he was the son of Mae and John Lee Murphy, a schoolteacher and store owner. He played sports at Gainesville High School and was the school’s Red Elephants quarterback.

“Reg never gave up on his small-town Southern roots. Each birthday his cake was decorated with a Red Elephant, the mascot of his team,” said Stanley Heuisler, former Baltimore Magazine editor. “There was a survivor’s toughness to Reg. I ran a 5K with him not long after his coronary bypass.”

Mr. Murphy covered news and sports while a student at Mercer University and later joined the Macon Telegraph before moving on to be a reporter and editorial page editor at The Atlanta Constitution, where he opposed the Vietnam War.

Mr. Murphy became a national news story when he was kidnapped on Feb. 20, 1974, by a kidnapper who ranted about “lying, leftist newspapers and Jewish control,” according to the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The paper, after 49 hours, paid a ransom of $700,000 for his release, which was later recovered, and his abductor was quickly apprehended.

He became publisher of the San Francisco Examiner in 1975, then took the same position at The Baltimore Sun in 1981, where he served until 1990 before becoming the paper’s chairman. He resigned the following year.

He was recruited by William E. McGuirk Jr., the banker who controlled the old Mercantile Safe Deposit and Trust Co., including the assets of the families who owned stock in the old A.S. Abell Co. Arunah Shepherdson Abell founded The Sun in 1837.

In 1986, Mr. Murphy announced the sale of The Sun, The Evening Sun and WMAR-TV to the Times-Mirror Corp., based in Los Angeles, for $600 million in cash.

“Reg was sharp as a razor. He brought his business savvy to The Sun, but he also brought diversity, which he felt the paper much needed,” said Mark Fetting, former CEO of Legg Mason. “He thought the paper needed to be modernized, and at the same time to make its great history known.”

Mr. Murphy also changed The Sun’s traditional society page. He dropped a requirement for membership in the Social Register or Baltimore Blue Book before a bride could be prominently depicted in the Sunday paper.

After leaving the paper, he and other investors bought Baltimore Magazine, which they later sold. He then joined the senior leadership of the National Geographic Society and was its president and CEO from 1996 through 1998.

He became the 54th president of the United States Golf Association in 1994 and was a founding member of the Caves Valley Golf Club.

He was a former chair of the trustees of Johns Hopkins Hospital and served on the Board of Visitors, College of Journalism and University of Maryland; Board of Trustees, among other philanthropic posts.

Survivors include his wife of nearly 32 years, Diana Mather Murphy; a sister, Barbara McConnell of Gainesville; two daughters, Karen Cornwell and Susan Murphy; and two grandsons.

Services will be held at 1 p.m. Nov. 19 at St. Simons Presbyterian Church.

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