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Show Leavitt succumbs to cancer One of Utah's brilliant journalistic jour-nalistic lights went out prematurely Saturday when Clipper Managing Editor Carrick D. Leavitt succumbed succumb-ed to cancer in Salt Lake City. He was 49. "The loss will be felt not only at the Clipper, but throughout our industry," in-dustry," said Clipper Publisher R. Gail Stahle referring to Leavitt' s death. "Carrick had a great influence in-fluence on a lot of people in the news business," Stahle continued. "We're all going to miss him." of the Daily Spectrum in southern Utah. He was part of the news team that won awards for coverage of the efforts of southern Utah's "downwinders" to convince the United States government that they were victims of atomic testing in Nevada and should be compensated accordingly. Leavitt often joked about his probability of contracting cancer and becoming a "downwinder" himself. He told stories of his treks with his father to the hills west of his St. George home to watch the pre-dawn detonations of atomic bombs at the Nevada Test Site. He recalled writing his name in the pinkish fallout that would settle on their car. His mother died of cancer in St. George when Leavitt was ten. During his stay in St. George, Leavitt collaborated on a news series about the militant constitu-tional constitu-tional fundamentalists' "Township" movement that grew nationwide from St. George. The senes received a Pulitzer nomination nomina-tion in 1983. In 1986 he left the Spectrum to return to UPI and worked at its bureaus in San Francisco Fran-cisco and San Jose until joining the Clipper and moving to Bountiful last November. Leavitt was bom in Las Vegas April 25, 1942 and moved with his family to St. George as a baby. He spent his school days in St. George and graduated from Dixie High School. He loved sports and overcame over-came childhood polio to become an all-state tackle for his high school football team. He enjoyed hunting and fishing, and his passion for guns led to a significant collection with which he spent long hours. He was a high priest in the LDS Church and had served in many positions, most recently as a stake missionary with his wife Martha in Concord, Calif. He served an LDS mission to England in the 1960s. He married Martha Diaz in St. Anthony, Idaho June 28, 1965. In addition to his wife he is survived by sons Cary, 24 and Marco, 22. His first grandchild is due in July. He is also survived by his father and stepmother, Dudley and Helen Leavitt of Cedar City as well as two brothers and six sisters. Funeral services are scheduled in St. George Saturday afternoon with burial in the St. George City Cemetery. f - t S - i j CARRICK LEAVITT Leavitt, who spent most of his 24-year career with United Press International, In-ternational, was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus in early April. He died early Saturday morning morn-ing at LDS Hospital. A graduate of the University of Utah, Leavitt began his journalism career during his school years as an intern at the UPI bureau in Salt Lake City. He went to San Francisco Fran-cisco upon graduation in 1967 and was transferred to Seattle in 1979. During his years with UPI he reported on such high-profile stories as the saga of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst's kidnapping and subsequent involvement with Symbionese Liberation Army and the explosion of the Mt. St. Helens volcano in Washington. More recently re-cently he spent many days in the field reporting on the 1989 earthquake earth-quake in San Francisco. Leavitt left the wire service for a four-year stint as managing editor , V |