COLUMBIA – Former Cobblestone Park resident and Blythewood Town official, Ken Baldwin Jr., died Monday, June 13.
A resident of Blythewood from 2002 to 2016, Baldwin was active in town government, still serving in his mid-80’s on the Town’s Architectural Review Board and as a member of the Doko Meadows Park Foundation.
Baldwin was a quiet, friendly man who was passionate about good government, town improvements, quality news reporting, and he had an enduring penchant for pressing town government to improve the storm water drainage along McNulty Road.
A career journalist, Baldwin took special interest in The Voice, always offering advice and support to the newspaper’s publisher and staff that continued after he and his wife, Phyllis DeLoach, moved to Still Hopes Episcopal Retirement Community in Cayce in 2016.
A University of South Carolina Alumnus with a degree in journalism (B.A., 1949) and former business editor, Baldwin believed today’s journalists must be business savvy if they are to report on the critical financial issues that impact readers. He continued to enhance their education through his generous contributions, totaling more than $3 million, to the USC School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
Baldwin established, in 2009, the USC Baldwin Business and Financial Journalism Endowment Fund that supports student and faculty initiatives that include research, symposia, lecturers, visiting professors, student assistantships and related programs.
The Baldwin Chair that he established in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications allows students to learn from an accomplished journalist with expertise in business and financial journalism.
See Baldwin’s obituary on page 2.