ATLANTA, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- Bill Tome, former United Press International editor, reporter and business representative, died Sunday at an Atlanta nursing home at age 82.
The cause of death was pneumonia, his wife said.
Tome, former Georgia state editor and Atlanta bureau manager whose three-decade career centered on the U.S. South, joined United Press in 1950 in Knoxville, Tenn., after graduating from the University of Tennessee.
Tome saw editorial and sales duty in Birmingham, Ala., amid the civil rights turmoil of the 1960s, and worked in Raleigh, N.C., before a second stop in Atlanta in 1969 put him in charge of the Georgia state news operation.
Tome was born Sept. 3, 1924, in Towson, Md., and raised in Philadelphia. He served with the U.S. Marine Air Group in the South Pacific during World War II.
He is survived by his wife of 57 years, the former Catherine Quinn, a daughter, Alice Miller of Dallas, a son, William O. Tome, Jr. of Charlotte, N.C., and two grandchildren.
