Warren D. Leary was “homegrown” and knew the Rice Lake area from the inside out. He lived through the community-shaping events during much of the last nine decades, allowing him to better put in perspective the events of today.
Learning first from his own father and also from the Rice Lake Chronotype staff, he experienced — from the ground up — all the facets of what it takes to put out a quality newspaper.
After graduating from the Rice Lake High School in 1941 he attended Notre Dame University for three years before entering the U.S. Army serving during World War II, serving much of that time as a prisoner of war. After receiving his honorable discharge he returned to Notre Dame to complete his bachelor’s degree before earning his master’s in journalism at Columbia University.
Upon the death of his father in 1959, he became publisher and co-owner of Chronotype Publishing, continuing in that capacity until his retirement at the end of 1986. He continued to write a weekly column for the newspaper up until the weeks preceding his death. In 2003 he was inducted into the Wisconsin Newspaper Hall of Fame by the WNA Foundation, of which he was a past-president. Leary was a civic leader instrumental in a number of community projects, including the effort that brought the University of Wisconsin campus to Rice Lake.
Leary died Aug. 17, 2009, at home. He was 86. He and his wife, Patricia Durand, had three sons, four daughters, two stepsons, a stepdaughter and 19 grand and step grandchildren.
