SPJ Executive Director Terry Harper dies

INDIANAPOLIS – Terry Harper, executive director of the Society of Professional Journalists, has died. He was 45.

The Indianapolis-based SPJ said in a statement that Harper died Tuesday following a two-year battle with brain cancer.

He had served as SPJ’s executive director for seven years and was credited with pushing the organization to enhance professional development training programs at the local level.

He also was executive director of the Sigma Delta Chi Foundation, the SPJ’s educational arm.

A native of Yukon, Okla., where he delivered papers as a boy for the Yukon Review, Harper was a 1986 graduate of Oklahoma State University.

He had 19 years of nonprofit association management experience, including 13 years with Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, where he served as executive director from 1990 to1999. He also had served as a financial advisor at UBS PaineWebber and had been director of fundraising for the Kiwanis International Foundation.

He is survived by his wife, Lee Ann Harper, and two teenage sons, Dale and Jace.