Loren R. Craft, 86, reporter and editor

Loren Robert Craft, 86, of Middletown, Del., a retired newspaper editor, died Sunday April 5, at Christiana Hospital in Delaware.

Mr. Craft's family moved around during World War II before settling in Delaware County, and he attended Temple University and Hunter College. His first newspaper job was in the composing room at the Bulletin, where he was taken under the wing of the highly regarded editor Walter Lister.

"At one point, he was Lister's personal copyboy," said Sylvia Craft, Mr. Craft's wife. One of his duties was to fill his boss's thermos with cold water. "One day he must have been distracted, and he filled it with hot water, and then heard howls coming from the office. Maybe Walter decided he'd be a better reporter than copyboy." He was, and soon graduated to rewrite man.

A slim and handsome man sometimes thought to resemble Jack Lemmon, Mr. Craft was drafted into the Army during the Korean War and joined the Counter Intelligence Corps. He conducted interviews and background checks on subjects applying for security clearances. Upon discharge, Lister recommended him for various jobs, and he became a reporter at the New York Post. It was in New York in February 1957 at a party of the Inner Circle, an association of political correspondents, that he spied another young reporter. "I made it known I was not interested in dating a newspaper reporter," said Sylvia Craft. They married four months later.

After the Post, Mr. Craft moved to the New York Daily News as a rewrite man, leaving for a time to work for TV and radio news operations. Returning to the Daily News in the mid-1980s, he became arts and entertainment editor, retiring about eight years later.

After moving to Delaware, he and his wife frequented Philadelphia Chamber Music Society concerts. His first brush with classical music dated to his days at the Bulletin, where he got to know the music critic Max de Schauensee, "and once in a while he would give Larry tickets to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra, which was basically his introduction to that kind of music," she said.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Craft is survived by daughters Susan, Laura and Diana, and five grandchildren. No services were to be held.