Dick S. West; Humor Columnist, Wire Service Journalist

Dick S. West, 68, a veteran of four decades of wire service journalism in Washington and the South who wrote the humor column “The Lighter Side” for 28 years. After four years of World War II Army service, West joined the old United Press in 1946. He covered the long-running labor racketeering hearings that first brought Teamster Jimmy Hoffa and committee counsel Robert F. Kennedy to prominence. In 1960, West took over the writing of the five-day-a-week humor column and wrote it for United Press International until 1988, when both he and the column retired. In Ormond Beach, Fla., on Tuesday of progressive supranuclear palsy, a nerve disorder.