Former UPI manager Jeff Field dead at 66

AUSTIN, Texas, April 20 (UPI) -- Jeffrey Leighton Field, a retired news industry executive, died at his home in Austin, Texas, after a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 66.

Field died Friday.

Field was born Sept. 20, 1942, at the Brooklyn Naval Hospital in Brooklyn, N.Y., to Elroy "Spider" Field and Elizabeth "Biz" Bosworth Field, and was raised in Westford, Mass. Field graduated from Westford Academy and met his lifetime love Leslie Pearce one summer on the shores of Lake Mattawanakee at age 13. They dated throughout high school and married in 1963.

After graduating from Emerson College in Boston with a degree in Communications in 1964, Jeff began a long career in the news industry as a reporter for United Press International in Buffalo, N.Y. He quickly rose to several management positions within UPI from bureau chief to West Coast news manager and played a key role in the deployment of computer automation in the news industry.

Field performed several international consulting projects including work for the Saudi Press Agency and the Kuwait News Agency. Later in his career, he joined Reuters and helped design systems to deliver news content to internet Web sites around the globe.

Besides his wife, he is survived by his son and two grandchildren.

Plans are under way for a memorial service to be held in Austin.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center at Johns Hopkins University (http://pathology.jhu.edu/pancreas/Support.php) or the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (http://www.pancan.org).