Former Californian publisher Don Fritts dies

The Bakersfield Californian | Thursday, May 4 2006 1:14 PM
Last Updated: Thursday, May 4 2006 1:14 PM

Don Fritts, publisher emeritus of The Bakersfield Californian and great-grandson of the newspaper’s defining and longest-serving publisher, Alfred Harrell, died Thursday at his home in Bakersfield from complications associated with a hereditary, degenerative brain disease. He was 69.

Fritts suffered from Huntington’s Disease, also known as Huntington’s chorea, a debilitating illness that confined him to bed for the last decade of his life.

Fritts was the brother and last surviving sibling of The Californian’s publisher and chairman of the board, Ginger Moorhouse, who assumed the reins of the family-owned newspaper in January 1989, two years before her brother’s illness finally compelled him to end his active participation in its management.

Donald Harrell Fritts became the newspaper’s executive editor in October 1966, a month before his 30th birthday. Just a year later he became convinced that he had inherited the Huntington’s gene from his father, Donald E. Fritts.

Fritts was formally diagnosed in 1981, but as he told his longtime secretary, Fay Walters, he knew he’d had Huntington’s since he was 31.

“He was able to effectively hide it until (about) 1977,” said Walters, who worked as Fritts’ administrative assistant from 1975 to 1994.

Dr. John Mazziotta, a neurologist at the UCLA School of Medicine and director of its brain-mapping division, told The Californian in 2000 that Fritts was already, in all likelihood, the longest-surviving diagnosed Huntington’s Disease patient in the world — and certainly the longest-surviving HD patient he had ever treated.

“He was a great supporter of research, and particularly of the Hereditary Disease Foundation,” Mazziotta said. “In the course of the time he’s had the disorder, the (medical) knowledge (of Huntington’s) has gone from a clinical description, to finding the gene, to finding what the gene makes, to trying to find strategies for treating and preventing the disorder. Through his philanthropic input he contributed greatly to that (progress). For people suffering from the disorder, now there is some hope.”