Obituary: Journalist, free-speech advocate Richard Kleeman loved to play with language

Living-room Scrabble games were vicious in the Kleeman home, where Dick Kleeman taught his children to love writing and language.

An education and political reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune, Kleeman earned friends in high places while working in the newspaper's Washington bureau during the 1960s. He also was a highly valued speaker of Japanese during his service in World War II, and he dedicated himself to the causes of free speech and freedom of information even after he left daily journalism in 1972. The unstoppable punster died earlier this month at age 91.

"He loved playing with language and he was a proud defender of the First Amendment,'' said David Kleeman, his son.

Richard Pentlarge Kleeman grew up in the Northeast, where his mother was a successful radio producer in New York City and his father was a banker. Kleeman attended Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut and then entered Harvard, where he graduated in 1944 despite having his studies interrupted by the war.

Kleeman's connection to Minnesota stemmed from his studies of the Japanese language, including time at Fort Snelling.

Starting at the Tribune in 1946, Kleeman covered education for more than a decade and traveled to Alabama in 1955 to report on segregated schools and the emerging civil rights movement. The upshot was a daring newspaper series called "Dixie Divided" that he wrote with Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Carl Rowan. Kleeman contributed to Rowan's subsequent book, "Go South to Sorrow.''

Even before Kleeman was reassigned in 1966 to the Tribune's news bureau in Washington, D.C., he had become a political junkie at a time when his wife, Roz Kleeman, was heavily involved in Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor movement. Roz Kleeman died in July. She was an aide to Hubert H. Humphrey when he was mayor of Minneapolis and the Kleemans remained friends with Humphrey and Walter Mondale as those two politicians rose to the White House.

In 1973, Mondale wrote to Kleeman days before he introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate to shield news reporters from government intrusion. "I would like to thank you for the valuable help you have given us in working out the final form of the bill,'' Mondale wrote.

By then, Kleeman had quit the Tribune to work for the Association of American Publishers. He also headed the National Freedom of Information Committee for the Society of Professional Journalists. Kleeman was also an advocate of women's rights, and he served on local and national boards for Planned Parenthood.

Ed Goodpaster, a former Tribune newsman and news editor for Time magazine, said Kleeman was a "superb'' reporter who worked diligently, "under low cover,'' and never angled for awards. He said Dick and Roz Kleeman kept in close contact with their transplanted Minnesota friends, hosting Christmas Eve caroling for nearly 40 years in their Washington neighborhood.

"Their closest friends remained their Minnesota friends,'' said their son, David.

A memorial service for Roz and Dick Kleeman will be held in Rockville, Md., on Dec. 27. In addition to David, they are survived by three other children: Nancy of Minneapolis; Alice of Redwood City, Calif.; and Kathy of Kendall Park, N.J.