The relatives and friends of Mr. Paul B. Mason are invited to attend his Mass of Christian Burial at 12:00 Noon , Wednesday, May 30, 2007, at St. Joseph Catholic Church. The Rite of Committal will be at St. Lawrence Cemetery. Paul Bailey Mason was born in Atlanta, Georgia June 21, 1929 and died April 28, 2007 at his home in Charleston. Paul worked for forty years in radio broadcasting for three networks and the Voice of America. His radio broadcasts were mostly news and talk shows but also included classical music, which was one of his great loves. His career in radio took him to South America during the 1950's where he served as a news correspondent for NBC out of Buenos Aires, returning to the states in 1964. A lifelong student of history and the classics, he studied at Harvard University, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and Temple University, earning a degree in history, magna cum laude, in 1976. At Temple he studied the Holocaust under Prof. Franklin Littlel. In later life, Paul studied English, religion, philosophy, film history and other topics and earned Masters Degrees in History and English from the College of Charleston and the Citadel in 1992 and 1994. He ended his work career as an adjunct professor with Limestone College in its "Block Program", the statewide extension adult education program. He was an aficionado of Southern culture and the Southern writers, most of whom he had interviewed, and some of whom he knew personally, including William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe and Flannery O'Connor. Paul was active politically as well, raised as a conservative Southerner under the tutelage of Georgia's Agrarian Governor, Gene Talmadge, whom he knew personally. He later became a close friend and associate of Stetson Kennedy. Kennedy worked successfully for 20 years to break up the Klan all over the Midwest and South, and published Jim Crow Guide in the 1950s as well as other books exposing the Klan. Paul himself testified in open Court against the Klan in the seventies and his Master's thesis in history at the College of Charleston recounts some of his experiences. He was a lifelong opponent of racism, and depended in his early life on the Monsignor at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Buckhead (Atlanta) for protection against the Klan. His death severs the only tie many of his younger friends had to that great era of transition from segregation to freedom in the South. Paul was a member of St. Joseph's Catholic Church. He attended many of the Masses, social events and other services. He was officially received into the Catholic faith during the Easter Vigil on April 7th of this year. He embraced the faith with great curiosity and insight. He was an integral part of the Thursday night faith formation class. This particular group benefited from the stories of his life experiences and the way he embraced the faith. He looked forward with great anticipation to his full initiation into the Church. We are happy that he achieved this goal before God called him home. Paul is survived by a loving friend, Edith Sievers, of Hamburg, Germany and many other friends across the nation. Arrangements by JAMES A. MCALISTER, INC. 1620 SAVANNAH HWY. 766-1365.