Dean Duncan, 90, of Brinkley, died Saturday, Aug. 29, 2015 in Little Rock. He was a veteran newspaper reporter and retired University of Central Arkansas journalism professor. He spent two years as a press officer for the Peace Corps in Washington, D.C. before accepting a position in 1967 as professor of journalism and public information officer at Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway. During 23 years on the faculty, he taught scores of journalism students, and many went on to become leaders in print and broadcast journalism in Arkansas and other states. He retired in 1990 and moved back to his childhood home in Brinkley.

Duncan was born in 1924 on Bald Mountain near Choctaw in Van Buren County, the third and youngest son of Benjamin Andrew Duncan and Dicie Edna (Huie) Duncan, both members of pioneer families in that area. When he was a child his family moved to the small town of Biscoe in Prairie County, then to nearby Brinkley, where he finished high school. He quarterbacked the Brinkley Tigers football team before graduating in 1943 and joining the U.S. Army Air Corps.

After World War II, he earned a bachelor's degree in English and journalism at Arkansas State Teachers College in Conway and a master's degree in journalism at Northwestern University in Illinois. In 1959 he studied
modern British government at Oxford University, then he traveled through western Europe gathering material for a series of stories published in a Memphis newspaper. After moving back to Brinkley, he served on the board of the Central Delta Historical Society and attended the Brinkley First Baptist Church.

He was preceded in death by his parents and by his brothers Burl of Little Rock and Weldon of Sylvan Hills.

Sources: The Central Delta Argus-Sun (Brinkley: September 3, 2015); U.S. Public Records Index, 1950-1993; Fowler Funeral Home, Brinkley, http://fowlerfh.com/