Former AP journalist and spokesman Jack Stokes dies at 73

NEW YORK — Jack Stokes, a veteran journalist with The Associated Press who was the news cooperative’s steadfast supporter and served as its spokesman during the last years of his decades-long career before his retirement, has died. He was 73.

Stokes, an avid cyclist and athlete, died unexpectedly after collapsing at his home in Queens on Sunday evening, said his longtime partner, Lorene Bradshaw.

He was remembered fondly by former colleagues as a calm, funny and charming presence everywhere from shifts working overnight in his early days to the company's basketball league that ran for a few years toward the end of his time at the AP.

“Jack was a beloved colleague to generations of AP employees and at many times felt like our center of gravity," said Josh Hoffner, national news director for the AP. “He loved the camaraderie of the AP and enhanced it every day.”

The widely known and outgoing Stokes was often a bridge among AP's various departments, making regular stops in different parts of the organization and its New York headquarters news operations to stop and chat. When people would ask him what was new, he'd retort: “You tell me.”

Stokes had started working at the AP in 1971 in temporary stints while still in college, before becoming a full-time hire in 1974 and spending about a dozen years with the AP's broadcast operations in New York City and in Washington.

He switched to the company's corporate communications in 1986 and then spent just over a decade in human resources, where he played a vital role in programs including its internship program for college students.

“His approach to diversity, staff development and mentorship was truly ahead of its time,” said Michael Giarrusso, AP's deputy head of newsgathering for global beats. “He launched hundreds of AP careers and built trust with bureau chiefs and department heads by putting the right interns in the right openings.”

Stokes returned to communications in 1998 and remained there until his retirement in 2012, always a champion for the AP's news values — as in April 2005, when he wrote to the editors of The Harvard Crimson in response to an editorial chastising the company. In his letter, he referred to what he called “a basic tenet of AP journalism: impartiality.”

Stokes “was the biggest cheerleader for AP that anybody could be,” Bradshaw said. “He loved it," she said. “He loved the people there.”

Raised in Poughkeepsie, New York, Stokes came to the city to go to college at Long Island University's Brooklyn campus, where he and Bradshaw met, she said. He was an eager explorer of everything the city had to offer, whether it was on a bicycle riding through the boroughs or taking in theater and other events.

Plans for a memorial are still being formulated.