Former Club President Allan Cromley dies

Former National Press Club President Allan Cromley died Aug. 8 after a three-month battle with pneumonia and an esophageal ailment.

Cromley, who led the Club in 1968, established the Silver Owls. He was instrumental in keeping the Club functioning during the upheaval following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"Al Cromley was a stalwart Club member, someone you could count on to uphold the Club's traditions," former Club President Gil Klein wrote in an email. "As president, he worked to keep the Club active after the 1968 riots damaged downtown business. As a founder of the Silver Owls, he was among the first at the podium with a song. And with his wife Marian, he was influential with the Gaylord family's Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, which has funded The Kalb Report at the Club for years."

A memorial service at the Club is being planned for early September. Details will be announced in an upcoming edition of the Wire.

As a reporter, Cromley covered pivotal moments in history. He accompanied President John F. Kennedy to Dallas on the day Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. In 1972, he traveled with President Nixon to Moscow. He reported on every presidential nominating convention from 1956 through 1992.

Cromley came to Washington in 1953 as the bureau chief of The Oklahoman. He served in that role through 1987 and then continued to report for the paper on a part-time basis until his retirement in 1996. He died at age 89.

Klein said that Cromley liked to recount the day he nearly lost the Club's liquor license while upholding the men-only regulation for the Tap Room.

“I got a call from the District’s Alcohol Beverage Board, and the chairman, Joy Symington, wanted to take a look at the men’s bar,” Cromley said, according to Klein. “I stood in the door to the bar like George Wallace in the school house door and said, ‘I’m sorry you can’t come in here.’ She tried to get our liquor license lifted, but she was outvoted by the two male members of the board.”

Cromley's obituary in The Oklahoman can be found here:
http://newsok.com/al-cromley-former-washington-bureau-chief-for-the-oklahoman-dies/article/3593006