Arthur H. Chambers, 65, anchor of Inquirer's night newsroom

Arthur H. Chambers, 65, an editorial assistant at The Inquirer from September 1970 to November 2005, died of complications from a stroke on Friday, Aug. 20, at the West Philadelphia home of his daughter, Dawn Marshall.

Mr. Chambers, who was appointed night clerical supervisor in 1986, helped stitch together the nighttime news operations of the paper for decades.

William K. Marimow, editor and executive vice president of The Inquirer, said on Monday that "even though he was chief clerk, Art exemplified excellence in journalism."

Marimow recalled that "when I was a city reporter and city editor, Art was omnipresent."

Mr. Chambers, Marimow recalled, "had an intimate knowledge of the city, its characters, its luminaries, and its rich history.

"When someone needed to find a colleague, whether he was at the Pen & Pencil Club" - the journalists' after-hours hangout - "at home or somewhere in between, Art could always be counted on to locate that person for breaking news."

On a lighter note, Marimow recalled that "one of Art's great talents was organizing the 'Final Jeopardy' game, which flourished in the Inquirer newsroom in the 1980s and early '90s."

In a momentary break from deadline pressure, some would gather around a television set for that brief segment of the game show.

"Everyone threw in a quarter," Marimow said, "and Art was the arbiter of the games' final results."

Mr. Chambers also salted that sort of newsroom camaraderie by bringing in, most nights, candies and snacks, paid for by staffers.

Five years after he left, the sign "Art's Buffet" remains where it had been during his newsroom years.

Managing editor Mike Leary noted that, though a clerk, Mr. Chambers "was like a police reporter.

"He reported and wrote stories often at night, under the tutelage of the legendary night city editor Mike Comerford."

Mr. Chambers was credited with contributing to deadline stories as part of the newsroom team that fanned out across South Philadelphia on the evening of the 1980 murder of crime boss Angelo Bruno.

Before he came to The Inquirer newsroom, his daughter said, Mr. Chambers had been a dispatcher at Philadelphia police headquarters.

Newsroom colleagues said that experience was crucial, because he could decode the sometimes arcane language that came through the city desk police scanner when police spoke among themselves about a developing crime.

Though he shared bylines with reporters in the early 1980s, he had a byline to himself in a profile of Steve Bouras, reporting on the night in 1981 that the reputed member of the so-called Greek mob was killed inside a South Philadelphia restaurant.

With an eye for detail, Mr. Chambers got a Philadelphia police detective to tell him that the yellow-and-black Mercedes-Benz parked outside the restaurant was, in fact, Bouras' and that the alleged mobster wore "a great deal of flashy jewelry."

"He used to sparkle," the detective told Mr. Chambers.

Later that year, Mr. Chambers and two others reported the murder of John Calabrese, an associate of the Angelo Bruno crime family.

The story noted that Calabrese was shot dead on a South Philadelphia sidewalk, only a block from the restaurant he had just left, the one at which Bruno had dined the night of his own murder.

Mr. Chambers' employment file contains frequent notices of bonuses for extraordinary work.

He also had a certain style.

Inside the newsroom and outside, he always wore the sort of cap that newsboys of an earlier generation wore.

He once showed a reporter the $100 bill that he carried high in one of his socks, in case he came across a troubling but persuadable gunman on his way home late at night.

And in the days before BlackBerrys and the all-knowing Internet, he handled the late-night drunken callers asking for some obscure fact to settle a barroom argument.

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Chambers graduated from West Philadelphia High School in 1961 and served in an Army communications unit in West Germany.

At The Inquirer, his daughter said, "he loved the people, he loved the hours.

"They offered him a bigger position" at one time, she said. "He wouldn't accept it because he liked working at night."

Besides his daughter, Mr. Chambers is survived by a son, Arthur Gilmore; Mr. Gilmore's mother, Paula; a brother; two sisters; and 10 grandchildren. Dawn Marshall's mother, Jean Stewart, died in 1989.

A viewing will be from 9 to 11 a.m. Monday, Aug. 30, at Resurrection Community Church, 62d Street and Dicks Avenue, Philadelphia, followed by an 11 a.m. funeral there, with burial in Fernwood Cemetery.