Obituary of John Berry Adams

John Berry Adams April 8, 1920 - June 19, 2015 John Berry "Jack" Adams, a professor and dean (1969-79) of the School of Journalism at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill from 1958-1985 and a member of the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame, died June 19, 2015, following a brief illness. He was 95. He was born April 8, 1920, in Millville, N.J. He enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army Air Corps in January 1942 and was commissioned in December 1942. He served 34 months in Europe in World War II and saw action in five campaigns, including Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he transferred to the U.S. Air Force and retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserves in 1980. Adams married Polly Betts "P.B." Goslin on Oct. 11, 1947. e attended the University of California at Berkeley and graduated in 1953 with highest honors in communication and public policy in two years. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he completed a master's (1954) and doctorate (1957) in journalism and mass communication. While a graduate student, he was a reporter and editor at The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison. He taught one year at Michigan State University before coming to Chapel Hill in 1958. Adams won UNC-Chapel Hill's Tanner Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching in 1984 and taught mass communication law to thousands of students. He was a distinguished scholar of mass media law, international communication, news dissemination, and source credibility, and published many articles in scholarly journals, notably Journalism Quarterly. The N.C. Press Association honored him with a life membership in 1979, and in 1984 the University of Wisconsin at Madison honored him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award. He was active in journalism accreditation, serving on the American Council on Education for Journalism in 1965-81 and as chair of its Accrediting Committee in 1976-79. He was also active in the Association for Education in Journalism (AEJ) and was a member of its Executive Committee (1968-71), Advisory Board (1965-67) and Teaching Standards Committee (1965-71 and 1974-77). He was also the first head of the AEJ International Communication division. He was president of the American Association of Schools and Departments of Journalism in 1975. Adams was a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the highest service honorary at UNC-Chapel Hill. He served on several committees at UNC-Chapel Hill and was on administrative boards of the School of Journalism, WUNC-FM, the Institute for Research in Social Science, and the Graduate School. Following his retirement in 1985, Adams and his wife remained in Chapel Hill, NC, where he was active in the Presidential Sports Fitness program, perfected his recipe for Irish soda bread, wrote short stories and family histories, studied genealogy, and collected examples of early printing and illuminated manuscript pages. Later, after they moved to Croasdaile Village retirement community in Durham, NC, he was regular contributor to the community newsletter on topics related to communications and current culture. P.B. Adams died Feb. 2, 2003. Adams is survived by a son, Mark Adams of Cardiff-by-the-Sea, CA, and his wife Kathryn and their two children, Harrison and Jocelyn; and by his daughter. Jane Adams Bohn of Westtown, PA, and her husband, Nathan, and their daughter Avery. A memorial service will be held on Wednesday, June 24 at 10:00 a.m. in the Ponder Auditorium at Croasdaile Village Retirement Community, 2700 Croasdaile Farm Parkway, Durham, NC. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be directed to the John B. Adams Student Emergency Fund at the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication (http://giving.unc.edu/gift/jomc). -30-