David R. Boldt, 73, former columnist and editor for the Inquirer.

IT WAS COMING up on Christmas 2000 when David R. Boldt had his customary martini lunch with Santa Claus.

Apart from trying and failing to twinkle the way Santa did during their conversations, David had news to impart. He was taking an early retirement after 28 years at the Inquirer as a writer and editor.

"What do you hope people say about you?" Santa asked.

"I'd like it if someone asked, 'Who was that masked man?' "

"This triggered a moment of reverie," David wrote, "and when I turned back, I saw that Santa had quietly left, once again sticking me with the check."

This kind of frisky humor was typical of the way David Boldt confronted the world and his job as an editor famous for encouraging and bringing out the talents of staffers, and as a sometimes-controversial editorial columnist.

He died yesterday of cancer at age 73. He was living in California but had lived in Chestnut Hill while with the Inquirer.

David wound up his career in Bolivia, where he moved in 2001 with his wife, Kelly Clark, former deputy city managing director.

He taught history at Cambridge College, a private high school in the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz. He also advised newspaper staffs in Bolivia and Peru under the auspices of the International Center for Journalism, and taught English and news writing at the American School in Santa Cruz. He also created a blog so English-speaking students could cover sports.

His wife worked at Nur University in Santa Cruz.

When he was diagnosed with cancer in February, David returned to the States and moved to California to be near family.

David was hired in 1972 by Inquirer editor Eugene L. Roberts Jr., who drove the staff to win a series of Pulitzer Prizes for hard-hitting investigative journalism.

David shared a Pulitzer with the Inquirer team that covered the Three-Mile Island nuclear disaster in 1979.

Probably David's biggest impact on the Inquirer and the city of Philadelphia was during his stint as editor of the Inquirer Magazine. In a memo to Roberts in 1977, David said he envisioned a Sunday magazine as being "funny, journalistically sound, and flawless."

"I want to put out a magazine each Sunday that will have something in it that all of Philadelphia will be talking about on Monday," he wrote.

The magazine won Pulitzer Prizes for feature photography in 1985 and 1986.

Daily News political cartoonist Signe Wilkinson said David Boldt was instrumental in starting her career when he hired her to draw cartoons for the Today Magazine.

"Laughter burst out of all the cubicles," Signe said. "He was an early adopter of Dave Barry's humor column. Every week when it came in, work would stop to read it with snorting at all the punch lines."

Said Barry: "David Boldt, in addition to being a tremendously fun guy, was a terrific editor. He pretty much launched my writing career.

"David Boldt ran a loose ship of talented people who both loved to laugh and loved to find good articles about Philadelphia and the world."

"What I remember most fondly were the long Friday afternoon lunches at Westy's on the corner of 15th and Callowhill streets when his staff and freelancers gathered around a big, round table in the back with a big, round pitcher of beer and just enjoyed the conversation," Signe said.

"David had a deep knowledge of history and a compassionate heart," said David Lee Preston, Daily News assistant city editor. "He was the editor of the Inquirer Magazine when it published two of my cover stories about my parents on Mother's Day 1983, five months after my mother died, and in 1985, after the magazine sent me on a monthlong trip with my father to the places of his past.

"They were among the first pieces written by a child of Holocaust survivors about a parent.

"David was a giant in our business, and I will never forget him."

Rebecca Pepper Sinkler, who went from the Today Magazine to become book editor of the New York Times Book Review, recalled her start as a secretary for the magazine.

"When David saw what a lousy secretary I was, he said, 'You failed at polishing your nails.' So he assigned me to go out and do stories and edit," she said. "He went to bat for me and fought for me to be promoted when management didn't want to promote a secretary."

Two friends from Bolivia said in a note to David's wife and children how much he meant to them.

"He leaves a legacy of courage, strength, wisdom, wit, kindness, knowledge and integrity," Mercedes and Rene Paz wrote. "Quite a man! It was an honor to know him and have him as a friend."

When he was running the Inquirer Magazine, David maintained an atmosphere of fun, often bordering on the bizarre. His imitations of John F. Kennedy and William F. Buckley Jr. were right on.

As inevitably happens with writers of strong opinions, David's columns sometimes provoked strong reaction, like the time he suggested that welfare mothers should take the contraceptive Norplant to avoid adding to the population of poor black children.

The reaction was swift and noisy. Pickets showed up outside the Inquirer building at Broad and Callowhill streets, talk radio was rocked by loud complaints, and one black staff member asked if David thought he should not have been born.

The newspaper published a statement apologizing for the way the story had been handled.

David Boldt was born in New York City. He received a bachelor's degree in history from Dartmouth College in 1963.

He married Fereshteh Sarshar, whom he had met in Iran. She died in 1989 at age 47. He later married Kelly Clark after meeting her at an editorial meeting on bond issues.

Besides his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Julia; a son, Thomas A. Boldt; a brother; a sister; and a granddaughter.

Services: Were being arranged.