Families of Elmore Draper Blake

ELMORE DRAPER BLAKE, son of EVA B. HALL and PROFESSOR WILLIAM S. BLAKE, was born July 22, 1880 in East Randolph, Cattaraugus, New York,³³⁴⁷ and died January 21, 1948 in Overton, Clark, Nevada.⁹⁰⁹⁸

He married (1) MARIANNA OLEVIA PEHRSON on November 15, 1904 in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.⁶⁰²⁸ She was born in 1881 in Sweden, and died March 23, 1925.⁹⁷⁹⁷

He married (2) NAN BENNETT. She was born March 3, 1886 in New York,²⁵⁰ and died January 12, 1975 in Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo, California.^{9798, 250}

Work History
Obituaries

Census Records

Children of MARIANNA OLEVIA PEHRSON and ELMORE DRAPER BLAKE:

TENNEY ELMORE BLAKE, b. May 9, 1906, Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;⁴⁸⁰⁸ m. LUCILE R. BURTON in 1939 in Yuma County, Arizona⁷⁰⁹⁶; d. July, 1974.⁵⁶

Tenney

Work History

Elmore D. Blake

newspaperman for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Ledger⁹⁷⁹⁶
movie publiscist⁹⁷⁹⁶
sporting goods merchant⁹⁰⁹⁸

Obituaries

Philadelphia Inquirer, March 25, 1925⁹⁷⁹⁷

BLAKE—Suddenly, on March 23, MARIANNA OLEVIA BLAKE (nee Pehrson), wife of Elmore D. Blake. Funeral services Thurs., 8 P. M., at parlors of Frank H. Foster, Merchants st. and Atlantic ave., Audubon, N. J. Int. private.

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Pasadena Independent, January 23, 1948⁹⁷⁹⁶

Ex-Newsman, Publicist Dies of Heart Attack

HOLLYWOOD (UP) — Elmore D. (ED) Blake, 67, former newspaper man and movie publicist, died of a heart attack Tuesday night during a fishing trip at Lake Mead, Nev., his family learned yesterday.

Blake had been a resident of Hollywood for 24 years after a series of newspaper jobs including news editorship of the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Ledger and a period as a Washington correspondent.

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Independent, Press-Telegram, January 22, 1975⁹⁷⁹⁸

Tribute to loyal friend, Nan Blake

by Donnell Culpepper

Nan Bennett Blake died last week in Morro Bay at the age of 88. That death may not mean anything to most of the residents of this city and the workers at the Independent, Press-Telegram, but to me, it marks the passing of a dear friend and one of the early great women reporters.

I am certain that there are some oldtime residents of Long Beach who will remember the byline of NAN BLAKE, which appeared in The Telegram and later in The Press-Telegram hundreds of times in the '20s and early '30s. She was famous for her stories about the poor and needy at each Christmas time. In the years, The Press-Telegram Christmas Cheer Fund was a legend.

She handled murder stories, in fact anything that the city editor wanted her to cover. If she had worked through the present era of women's lib, she would have had no part in it. In print, she was Nan Blake; in private life she was Mrs. E. D. Blake. Her husband, E. D. (Ed) preceded me as news editor of The Press-Telegram and I feel that I owe him much for my early training in the newspaper business.

Jack Welch, an artist and my high school buddy, and I came West with the Blakes from Fort Worth in 1924, and it took us 10 days from there to Los Angeles. We traveled in a Model T over the plank road of the Imperial Valley and dusty roads that are now super-highways. The Blakes were like father and mother to me. We lived together in a bungalow court in Hollywood when Ed worked on the old Herald-Express and I on the L. A. Examiner.

Ed, Nan and I learned how to fish the Pacific on such oldtime boats as Paul Albright's Enterprise, the Moonlight, Water Witch and others out of the old Pine Avenue Pier. We caught yellowtail, albacore, dolphinfish, bluefin tuna and other species just offshore in the San Pedro Channel.

Ed died in 1948 on a camping-fishing trip to Lake Mead. His heart gave out while sitting around a campfire one evening. He was cremated and I hired a boat to scatter his ashes over the Pacific water that he loved so well. There wasn't any ceremony. Nan, his son, Tenney, the skipper and I just said a prayer and scattered the ashes, then dropped a wreath of flowers. Misty-eyed, we returned to shore.

Ed had been a top editor for William Randolph Hearst in New York and Chicago before I met him in Fort Worth. Nan had been the first woman on a rewrite desk of the Chicago American. She was born in New York City in 1886, quit high school to go on the stage with the famous Corse Payton Stock Company in Brooklyn. She followed that with several vaudeville sketches.

After World War I, she went into the newspaper business, working on the New York Daily News, Chicago American, Fort Worth Record and later in Long Beach. She became the first woman publicity writer for RKO Studios in 1934. She handled stories on fashion and beauty. She retired from RKO in 1952 and moved to Morro Bay.

About that same time, Nan suffered an eye infection and had to have one eye removed. After she moved to Morro Bay, Joyce Rustin became her companion. At Christmas I received a "News letter from the House of Nan Blake," written by Joyce, which read, in part:

"Nan Blake suffered a severe stroke in June of 1974 and was in a nursing home until August. She is now back in her home, but the stroke has affecter he right arm and leg and it's hard for her to put thoughts on paper. Yet she reads her mail with great enthusiasm.

"She has never lost her interest in the news and can watch television newscasts. Like the analytical, self-reliant, practical-thinking person she always has been, she has rolled with the punches, taken it all in stride with never a whimper or show of vexation of her plight.

"Words may fail her, but she can laugh at a comical situation, be thrilled by watching a flaming sunset over the ocean, birds feeding on the front lawn and wave to neighbors as they pass. She wishes all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year."

This columnist's regret is that I never took the time to send a note of encouragement to her after that letter. I am sure that she will find Ed fishing somewhere in that Great Beyond.

Census Records

Date	Location	Enumerated Names
June 5, 1900³³⁴⁸	Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	Eva B. Hall Harold Hall Blake Elmore Draper Blake Lyman Lee Hall Caroline B. Draper
April 16, 1910³³⁴⁹	Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania	Elmore Draper Blake Daughter Tenney Elmore Blake
January 6, 1920⁵⁹⁰⁹	Oaklyn, Camden, New Jersey	Elmore Draper Blake Daughter Tenney Elmore Blake
April 11, 1930³³⁷	Long Beach, Los Angeles, California	Elmore Draper Blake Nan Bennett
April 26, 1940²⁵³⁷	Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California	Elmore Draper Blake Nan Bennett
April 8, 1950⁹⁵¹⁵	Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California	Nan Bennett