John D. Lowry; UPI Bureau Chief, L.A. Press Club President

John D. Lowry, who started as a teletype operator and wound up as Los Angeles bureau chief for United Press International and president of both the Greater Los Angeles Press Club and the journalism society Sigma Delta Chi, has died. He was 78.

Lowry, who lived in Frazier Park, Calif., died of respiratory failure at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Valencia on June 4, his daughter, Debra Wilson, said this week.

Born in Toronto, Lowry moved to Southern California as a small child. After one year at Southwestern University, he went to work for the national wire service as a teletype operator.

Priding himself on the reputation of having “the fastest hands in the West,” Lowry worked for UPI in both blue-collar and executive capacities for 42 years. He took time out only to serve in the Army Signal Corps during World War II.

Lowry switched from typing stories to reporting, writing and editing them in 1956. He was named bureau chief in 1960--just in time to supervise coverage of the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles, which nominated John F. Kennedy for President.

Lowry’s appointment to boards of the press club and the Los Angeles chapter of Sigma Delta Chi--now called the Society of Professional Journalists--and later election as president of both proved how completely he had switched to the newsman role. Highly respected in his profession, Lowry retired to the Tehachapis in 1979.

Lowry, whose wife, Marjorie, died in December, is survived by a son, Richard, of Rifle, Colo.; two daughters, Mrs. Wilson of Grants Pass, Ore., and Linda Shaver of Springfield, Ore., and seven grandchildren.