Mr. Pett-Ridge's route to Pittsburgh was a colorful one, beginning the day he was born in London on Sept. 9, 1944, smack in the middle of Hitler's V-2 missile assault on the city in the waning days of WWII.
His father was a colonel in the British Army and in the field at the time, his mother a homemaker with an older son. Mr. Pett-Ridge worked his way through the English school system until his last year of high school, which he spent as an English Speaking Union exchange student at Tabor Academy, a private boarding school in Marion, Mass.
Among his escapades that year, besides occasionally studying, were participating in a sailing competition between Newport, R.I., and Bermuda and hitchhiking cross-country to the Seattle World's Fair. Most importantly, he would tell friends, during that time he met his roommate's sister, Jean Cherry, on a blind date that took them to New York City to see "West Side Story." They married five years later.
His newspaper career began with a three-year writing apprenticeship for a small weekly paper in England. After emigrating to the United States in 1966, he went to work for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, then served a two-year stint in the U.S. Army, became a citizen and returned to the Plain Dealer in 1971. There, he moved from writing to graphic design.
By the time he joined the Post-Gazette in 1985 his talent for integrating important news into smart page design was undeniable, and, even during a period when the paper was doing little hiring, irresistible. He was put in charge of defining the look of the newspaper, and influenced a generation of page designers, artists and photographers in the process.
“His work reflected the very best in both British and American newspaper design,” said John Robinson Block, the Post-Gazette’s publisher and editor in chief. “But the greatest thing was that he was a gentleman, and it was a pleasure to know him.”
As busy and devoted as he was at work, Mr. Pett-Ridge lived a life in full outside of it.
He and Jean raised two daughters, Jennifer and Julie, both now accomplished research scientists who live on the West Coast. Mr. Pett-Ridge attributed their path to achievement to his wife's smarts and parenting skills but his involvement and pride in his daughters' lives from childhood on were evident to all who knew him.
Julie said her father had a talent for plotting all manner of family adventures, some with more twists than others. In particular, she remembers a 30-mile "Mad Dash" across Glacier National Park to catch a boat and long rambling hikes along the Pembrokeshire Coast of Wales "when we mis-estimated when the tide was coming in or when the last bus came around."
For Jennifer, her father's love of good writing was a constant and an inspiration. She would turn to him for his opinion and edits from the time she was a young student working on her school newspapers to the scientific writing she does now. He was also a creative, funny writer, she said, whether it was the few lines he'd pen on her birthday cards, his longhand letters to faraway relatives, or the first chapter he wrote for a group novel his and Jean's book club started — and never finished — years ago.
"I don't think any of the other couples ever wrote another chapter, because they couldn't match the style nor the quality," she said.
An insatiable reader, Mr. Pett-Ridge took in three newspapers a day, a book or two a week, a dozen magazines a month, none of the going simple or light. Then there was the biking, hiking, camping and especially the rowing and running.
For much of the time he worked at the Post-Gazette, Mr. Pett-Ridge would leave his job around midnight, go home and catch a couple hours of sleep then show up at dawn for training at the Three Rivers Rowing Association's base on Washington's Landing, where he competed in the masters rowing program for more than 20 years.
He also completed 20 marathons and in recent years ran three ultra marathons in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, the last one at age 69, making him the oldest runner on the snow--and-sleet-covered course. His prizes that day were getting his name on the Kepler Challenge trophy as well as receiving a tent, which he promptly re-gifted to a race volunteer.
Despite his interest in recreational athletics and his 30 years in the City of Champions, he remained indifferent to American professional team sports. Post-Gazette Executive Editor David Shribman remembers stopping in the office in February 2006 when Mr. Pett-Ridge was designing the front page for the Steelers' Super Bowl appearance that year. Across the top of the page, he had placed a score: Steelers 21, Sea Dogs 10."
"Chris, who knew so much about so many things, was oblivious to the fact that the Steelers were playing the Seahawks," said Mr. Shribman. "It was probably the only thing he did not know. He was a sharp editor and the warmest, most utterly loyal and generous of friends. It is impossible to think of Pittsburgh or the Post-Gazette without him — and the wisdom he applied to the smallest things along with the biggest things."
Besides his wife and daughters he is survived by two sons-in-law and four young granddaughters.
At his insistence, Mr. Pett-Ridge's family will mark his passing with a get-together for friends and family at a future date at their home, the celebration inspired by a favorite Tennyson poem: "May there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea."
The family suggests memorial donations be made to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, where Mr. Pett-Ridge volunteered for many years.
