Gunn Obituaries - My (New) Homepage

Lynchburg, Mrs. L. M. Cole of Virginia Beach, Mrs. J. O. Millner of Newport News, Mrs.
E. R. Ashworth of Victoria, Mrs. J. E. Hudgins of Crewe; six sons, Clyde T. And Bryant M.
Gunn, both of Norfolk, Harry R. Gunn, Jr., Archie Gunn, Franklin Gunn all of Crewe and
Jim W. Gunn of Burkeville, and 22 grandchildren, and three great grandchildren. Funeral
services were held Saturday at 2 pm from C. L. Jennings and Son Funeral Home in Crewe,
Virginia. Interment was in St. Mark’s Methodist Church Cemetery.
Harry Raymond Gunn
Harry Raymond Gunn, 84, of Crewe, Va., died Wednesday, December 31, 2003. He is
survived by his wife of 59 years, Nancy Jones Gunn; three daughters, Jean G. Tennefoss,
Linda G. French, and Karen G. Parton; and sons-in-law, James Tennefoss, Adlai French,
and Leigh Parton; four grandchildren, Stephanie M. Hawkins, Chandra Martin, Jeffrey
French, and Tommy French; five step grandchildren, Brent Tennefoss, Robin Tennefoss,
Randy Tennefoss, Dena T. Brooks, and Chris Parton; and ten great-grandchildren. He is
also survived by five sisters, Annie G. Cole, Marguerite G. Nicholas, Cecil G. Millner, Janie
G. Ashworth, and Barbara G. Hudgins; two brothers, Monroe Gunn and Franklin Gunn.
His family will receive friends from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, January 1 at Jennings-
McMillian Funeral Home in Crewe. Services will be held 2 p.m. Friday, January 2 at
Jennings-McMillian Funeral Home. Interment Crewe Cemetery. Contributions may be
made to the Nottoway County Rescue Squad. (Thomas and Sarah Boatwright Gunn
descendant)
Hartford N. Gunn Jr.,
a pioneer in educational television and the founding president of the Public Broadcasting
Service, died of cancer yesterday Jan 2, 1986, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
He was 59 years old. After widely acknowledged success in the 1960"s at the Boston
television station WGBH, Mr. Gunn was chosen in 1970 as the first president of the new
Public Broadcasting Service, a network of 110 stations. The system has since grown to 180
stations. ""He built the foundation, he was the visionary, he recognized the need for public
television in this country,"" said Lawrence K. Grossman, president of NBC News and the
man who replaced Mr. Gunn as president of PBS in 1976. ""He was instrumental in
building a national network from a disparate group of local stations."" But in the six years
of Mr. Gunn"s presidency, the public network struggled with problems of financing,
political pressures and disputes among the stations over the network"s direction. A Battle
for Money Perhaps the most threatening problem in the early life of PBS was the battle for
money. Operating funds were supplied annually by Congress, and the network"s
independence was vulnerable to political pressure. During the Nixon Administration,
financing became a particularly thorny problem. PBS broadcast the Senate"s daily
Watergate hearings and replayed them nightly in prime time. ""There were tremendous
fights, with the Nixon Administration trying to prevent public television from doing any
public affairs programming at all,"" Mr. Grossman recalled. ""They were very rocky and
difficult days."" It wasn"t until 1975, a year before Mr. Gunn was replaced by
Mr.Grossman, that Congress provided a measure of the long-term financing that Mr.