John Saunders

John Phillip Saunders, who wrote the comic strips, “Mary Worth” and “Steve Roper and Mike Nomad,” died on Nov. 15 from complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 79.
Saunders attended Wabash College, Purdue University, the University of Toledo and Northwestern University. During World War II, he earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star serving as a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army. He was also a stringer for the European edition of Stars and Stripes, a job that launched his three-decade career in radio and television as a broadcast journalist and announcer.
His father, Allen Saunders, started writing the comic strip, “Mary Worth,” in 1938. Forty years later, when Allen became too ill to work, John took over the strip’s writing duties and continued the cartoon’s legacy. “Mary Worth” is syndicated to 350 newspapers worldwide.
Saunders also took over his father’s other comic strip, “Steve Roper and Mike Nomad,” which appears in 90 newspapers. Both “Mary Worth” and “Steve Roper” will continue with new writers, King Features Syndicate said. The Allen and John Saunders Collection of comic strips resides at the Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.