R. George Kuser Jr. ’51

George was born Dec. 7, 1926, in Trenton, N.J., to R. George and Mary Kerney Kuser.

A Lawrenceville graduate, he served in the Army for three years. At Princeton he was a politics major and belonged to Elm Club. He learned the newspaper business at The Trenton Times, which was owned by his mother’s family. In 1955 he bought the Troy (Ohio) Daily News. After 14 years managing small newspapers in the Midwest, he spent a year in Nairobi, Kenya, serving as president and a pilot for Wings for Progress, a humanitarian airline.  

George returned as publisher of The Trenton Times in 1973, but sold the newspaper to The Washington Post in 1975. In the 1980s he settled in Florence, Italy. He returned to the United States in 2010 and died in Montecito, Calif., March 18, 2012, of coronary disease.

George’s first wife, the former Clare McHugh, died in 1990. He is survived by his wife, Mariane Ross; his children, Clare Fox, R.G. III, Peter, Michael, James, Sarah, and Gulcin Karadeniz; six grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; his brother, James; sister Sally Lane w’34; Sally’s children Stephen ’72, Henry ’78, Mary ’79, and Teresa ’84; and his cousin, Regan Kerney ’68.