'Newspaper man,' Ocean City local John Purnell dies

Longtime journalist and Ocean City native John Purnell died Thursday after a brief illness. 

He was 73. 

During his 40-year career, Purnell reported on a variety of stories from murder trials to features. He worked as a reporter for The Palm Beach Post in Florida, and the Washington Times in Washington, D.C., where he was a metro reporter and columnist. He also wrote for the Baltimore Sun, Worcester County Times and Baltimore News American. 

In a Palm Beach Post profile about Purnell in 1981, he said he began his career in journalism at age 5, stuffing inserts in the Ocean City Post. 

When his career came full circle and he returned to Delmarva around the mid-2000s, Purnell was a veteran reporter who helped advise a young newsroom at the Worcester County Times, said James Fisher, a former colleague.

"John was a reporter later in his career, working with younger colleagues, and I was always really impressed that he never disparaged the younger people he worked with just because they were younger and less experienced than him," Fisher said. 

To Fisher, that was the kind of man Purnell was — always willing to lend advice without making a big deal of it.

Fisher noted his interesting and varied career in journalism at The Palm Beach Post and Washington Times.

"He had a lot of stories about brushing up against interesting and famous people," Fisher said.

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While reporting for The Palm Beach Post on migrant-labor conditions around Belle Glade, Florida in 1972, he was arrested for trespassing at a sugar camp. The charges were later dropped.

But former co-workers remember him for his personality off the clock, too. 

“He was provocative and very funny. And he always knew the latest gossip,” said Anne Krueger, a former colleague at the Palm Beach Post. 

"I worked with him and he was always kind and generous," said Kristin Roberts, a former co-worker at the Worcester County Times. "He was always smiling, and he loved the sunshine."

Working for the Worcester County Times, Purnell and the rest of the staff also had to write for other weekly publications like the Beachcomber. 

It involved features, breaking news and government affairs. But the do-it-all job fit Purnell's style, said Susan Canfora, who worked with him at the time. 

"One of the editors at the time used to characterize his style of writing as the purist style of writing," Canfora said.

It was honest and from the heart, Canfora said. He was always the first one in the office, too, she said.

Purnell graduated from Stephen Decatur High School and went to University of Maryland to pursue a journalism degree, becoming the editor of the campus newspaper, the Diamondback. 

He was proud of his family’s long history in Ocean City, according to friends. In the 1920s, his father William H. Purnell bought the landmark Atlantic Hotel on the Boardwalk at Wicomico Street. The family rebuilt the hotel in 1925 after a fire destroyed the property.

Purnell's mother, Sarah Lynch Purnell, whose father founded Ocean City’s first bank, helped operate the Atlantic for more than 60 years, including a dining room that served as many as 1,500 meals a day before it ceased operation in the 1960s, according to Marilyn Alva, a longtime friend and co-worker.

Alva met Purnell at the University of Maryland. She said he was an award-winning journalist who had done it all, but also a close friend for almost 50 years. 

"He was a huge newspaper man," Alva said. "He had four papers delivered to his house. He always had papers. He was always reading papers. He was just a wealth of knowledge."

In the Palm Beach Post profile, Purnell explained his passion. 

"Reporting is a totally immersing job," Purnell said. "It's a reporter's responsibility to familiarize himself with the subject matter and the persons and issues involved. Sometimes I worry that I'm too intense, and I have to fight that. I don't want to lose objectivity, but I enjoy the experience of being involved in public affairs, writing about the issues." 

Services will be held on Feb. 7 at 11 a.m. at the Evergreen Cemetery in Berlin. A reception will follow at the Atlantic Hotel in Berlin.

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