By Bob Allen
Don McGregor, a founder of Associated Baptist Press (today known as Baptist News Global) who served as the independent new service’s first executive director, died June 30 in Mesquite, Texas. He was 91.
As editor of the Baptist Record in Mississippi from 1976 until his retirement in 1990, McGregor served as president of the Southern Baptist Press Association and chairman of the public relations advisory committee that related to the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, the national entity which oversees Baptist Press.
The press association, later renamed the Association of State Baptist Papers, convened a called meeting on July 7, 1990, in anticipation of the imminent firing of Baptist Press journalists Al Shackleford and Dan Martin in a dispute over editorial freedom.
The editors took no formal action at the meeting, but later a smaller group met in a hotel room to lay the foundation for Associated Baptist Press, the nation’s first autonomous national news service founded by and for Baptists. The editor group later formally endorsed ABP, announced immediately after the firing of the two BP editors on July 17, 1990.
The ABP board of directors initially contracted with Craig and Associates, a communications consulting firm in Nashville, Tenn., to produce the news service with Martin as interim editor. That ended in January 1991, when McGregor was designated interim executive editor and moved ABP operations to Jackson, Miss., until the hiring of Greg Warner as ABP’s first executive editor in April 1991.
“Don McGregor was the epitome of a Christian gentleman/journalist, pure of heart and unwavering in his commitments to his God, his family and his work,” Warner said July 2. “During his decades of ministry as a Baptist editor, Don saw it all and did it all. Then toward the end of this stellar career, when others might have stepped back and left the hard stuff to others, Don was the linchpin that held the dream of ABP together in its early days. With nothing but a typewriter, fax machine and his determination — with no compensation and little credit — he quietly kept the organization alive as it carved out its unique niche in Baptist life — as a truly free news ministry independent of any outside financial and denominational support.”
Born in a farmhouse about half way between McGregor and Crawford, Texas, McGregor, a pastor’s son, was a 17-year-old freshman at Baylor University when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
He volunteered for the Army in November 1942, first as an engineer and later in the infantry when plans were formed to invade Europe beginning in July 1943 and culminating with the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.
McGregor arrived in Marseille, France, on Oct. 20, 1944, and served in combat as a machine gunner until he was wounded and captured on Dec. 2. He spent the rest of the war serving in hard labor at a POW work camp in Czechoslovakia, weighing less than 100 pounds when he made it back to American lines after V-E Day on May 8, 1945.
McGregor returned to Baylor, majoring in communications. He launched a career in journalism in 1948 with the Reporter-Telegram in Midland, Texas. He worked at radio station KCRS, before accepting a job as editorial associate at the Baptist Standard, state Baptist paper for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.
After four years, McGregor switched to the Dallas Times Herald as make-up editor for the business news department and then served as editor of a real estate magazine.
McGregor returned to the Baptist Standard, serving on the editorial staff for more than 15 years before stepping down as associate editor to become editor of the California Southern Baptist in 1971.
In 1976 McGregor replaced Joe Odle as ninth editor of the Baptist Record, serving 14 years before retiring Dec. 31, 1990, at age 66. In retirement he authored The Thought Occurred to Me — a book about Owen Cooper, a Mississippi layman who served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention 1972-1974 — published in 1992.
“Don was smart, gracious and humble,” said David Wilkinson, executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. “Following retirement, he responded to years of physical challenges and declining health with the same kind of faith and courage he exhibited as a Baptist editor.”
“We are poorer in his passing,” Warner said. “I wish, in his last years, Don had been able to observe and appreciate what ABP, now BNG, has become — something even greater than the founders could imagine. None of that could have happened if Don had not been ‘the finger in the dike’ during ABP’s first year. I and others owe this gentle and gracious man a debt we can never pay. But all he would ask of us is to see his dream, and ours, to its fruition.”
Visitation for family and friends is scheduled for 6-8 p.m. on Tuesday, July 7, at Laurel Oaks Funeral Home and Memorial Park in Mesquite, Texas. His funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Wednesday, July 8, in the funeral home chapel, with burial to follow at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery.