Doyle Harvill, Tribune editor who led expansion, dead at 80

H. Doyle Harvill, son of a Baptist preacher in rural Hillsborough County and an outsider among Tampa's social and political elite, gloried in taking local power brokers to task.

With his growling, gravelly drawl, the Tampa Tribune's top editor exhorted his reporters to hammer at the wall between average citizens and the public officials who spent their tax money.

"He was the guy who stood in between the little man and the politicians who ran things," said former Tribune editor Larry Fletcher. "He wasn't afraid of anybody, any governor, senator or lawyer."

Harvill, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in September, died at 5:40 p.m. today in his home at the Bayshore Diplomat condominium. He was 80.

Harvill led the Tribune's news operation in the late 1980s during a period of dramatic expansion, sparked by a move into Hillsborough County by The St. Petersburg Times.

Boasting of his aims to cover Florida from the Okefenokee to the Everglades, he hired a battalion of reporters and opened half a dozen bureaus across the state and at one time even considered a Latin American bureau.

In retirement, Harvill devoted himself to his orange grove near Wauchula.

Until the brain tumor diagnosis, Harvill was strong and active, said his son Alan. He played tennis three days a week, worked in his grove three days and rested Sundays.

Always direct, frequently brusque and profane, Doyle Harvill practiced an in-your-face style of communication in the newsroom, often with a cigarette fresh from his mouth. He disdained any show of political correctness.

But his defenders say his bluster had a purpose: To build up the Tribune as a force in Florida journalism.

"He had this great vision of Tribuneland," said Donna Reed, formerly with the Tribune and now an executive with its parent company, Media General, in Richmond, Va.

"Everyone remembers Doyle at the map and sweeping his arm across 'Tribuneland.' He understood there were readers out there to serve, and he went after them," Reed said.

"He had this energy. ...He filled the room the minute he walked in."

Friend and colleague Jim Head said Harvill treated Bay area readers to one of the last real newspaper wars Florida would see.

"He was a mighty oak of a man," Head said. "As editor of the Tribune, he assembled a staff that protected its own turf and even made inroads across the bay."

Harvill grew up in the eastern Hillsborough farming community of Keysville, the son of a man he described as a "foot-washing" Baptist. He was a stand-out baseball player in high school, said Leland Hawes, a history writer and former Tribune colleague of Harvill's.

But at 19, after a stint as a printer with his future competitor, the St. Petersburg Times, Harvill joined the U.S. Marines and went to Korea.

He returned with shrapnel in his body and a reluctance to talk about the war, though he spoke to a St. Petersburg Times reporter when he came home in November 1951.

"In his nine months of action," the story said, "Cpl. Harvill, a tall, blond, handsome youth, engaged in the bitter, survival-of-the-fittest slaughter at Inchon, Kimpo air strip, Seoul, Wonson ... and the 24 below zero hell at Chosin reservoir when the Marines were outnumbered 100 to 1."

After graduating from the University of Texas, Harvill became a reporter at the afternoon Tampa Times in 1958. He thrived on hard news and aggressive political coverage.

"He was an ambitious, hard-driving guy, even then," Hawes said.

As an editor, he grew into a teacher to young reporters, said Abby Kaighin, who worked with him as a young reporter in the 1960s. "He took rookies and turned them into professionals," Kaighin said.

Working his way up to managing editor, Harvill left Tampa in 1974 to become an executive with Multimedia Inc. in Greenville, S.C., where he was top editor of its flagship newspaper then publisher at its second-largest property in Montgomery, Ala.

He returned to Tampa in 1986 to lead the paper's expansion.

Harvill was known for standing close to the editors who worked for him and prodding them with questions.

"He'd be right up to your nose, and he'd have his Merit cigarette," Reed said. "But that was just exercise for him. He'd pick a fight, I think, to stimulate your thinking."

Many evenings he'd march from office to office.

"You always heard him coming, and he would come to talk about news. 'Why'd you do this?' or 'Why didn't you do that?'" Reed recalled.

He intimidated people but always in the service of the news report, she said.

"There was this constant agitation, but it was all purposeful. He wanted to make you tough, to make sure there was fire in your belly, and to make a better newspaper."

Harvill had causes.

He used the newspaper to try to stop the public Tampa General Hospital from becoming private. The hospital is a private, nonprofit institution today.

Every day, he railed about holding accountable all local politicians and their appointees on boards that had taxing powers, Fletcher said.

"With each election, he drove us to say the truth about the candidates and not let them just say whatever they wanted, but to force them to talk about the issues voters cared about."

Harvill also believed in knowing his community, from the back roads to the main streets. As a young reporter, he roamed Hillsborough and the surrounding counties looking for stories.

As an editor, one of his favorite orders was "hit the bricks."

Harvill knew people wanted local news, said former Tribune editor and columnist Judy Hill. He knew they wanted to know "when the pothole in their street will be fixed. Why the cops are always at a neighbor's house. What's going on at their kids' schools."

After four years as executive editor, Harvill was named publisher in 1990, replacing Red Pittman.

Independent of Tampa's power structure, Harvill was asked in 1991 to try to mediate a conflict over the exclusion of black people from Tampa's powerful Ye Mystic Krewe, which put on the annual Gasparilla celebration.

Tampa was in the spotlight that year as host of Super Bowl XXV.

The krewe ended up calling off Gasparilla that year, so Harvill helped the local NAACP leader, Henry Carley, organize the multiethnic Bamboleo parade.

Two years later, after starting a short-lived Tribune humor magazine, the Big Guava, Harvill retired. He turned his attention to another passion, growing oranges.

Over the years, he'd pieced together about 500 acres of groves near Wauchula.

"He bought what I call 'thrown-away, run-down groves,' and we thought he was probably the city slicker getting taken by the locals," said Bill Cruise, chairman of the Wauchula State Bank, who became a friend.

"He proved us wrong. ...He went in there and fixed them up and repaired the irrigation and made really good groves out of them."

Harvill was also a founder of the Community Foundation of Tampa Bay in 1989 and served as its chairman from 1992-94.

As chairman, "Doyle gave the foundation true credibility in the community," said attorney Sandy Rief, who later served as chairman. By taking that role, Harvill signaled that "this was something that was good for Tampa and would be there in the future."

As busy as Harvill was in retirement, he never lost his interest in journalism or the Tribune, although his first trip back wasn't until about 10 years after he'd left, Fletcher said.

"He walked in like he owned the place. He could recall every person he'd worked with by name, and he had something to say about them, all positive."

Harvill had a soft side, Fletcher said.

"He had a real affection for the people who worked in that newsroom."

Harvill's survivors include his wife Elyse, son Alan and daughter Kimberly Scott. Arrangements are pending with Blount & Curry Funeral Homes in Tampa.

This summer, Harvill celebrated his 80th birthday. People flew in from around the world, including reporters he had hired more than 40 years earlier who had never lost touch with him.

They toasted him and told stories.

"We didn't know it then," Hawes said, "but it turned out to be a last hurrah."