Former newspaperman and San Diego State University advertising professor Jack Haberstroh died Saturday at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla from complications of a stroke. He was 80.
Haberstroh was born in Chicago in 1926, and his family moved to Los Angeles in the early 1930s. He sold advertising for the now-defunct Los Angeles Daily Mirror and The New York Times in Los Angeles, and was publisher of two small newspapers in the Long Beach area.
From 1969 to 1977, he taught at SDSU, challenging his students to think creatively about every issue they faced. Haberstroh once mortgaged his home to buy two 40-seat buses that provided daily free service from Pacific Beach and Ocean Beach to the campus. Dubbed the “Bug Line,” the buses were brightly painted like giant caterpillars, decorated with eyes on the front and antennae protruding from the roofs.
In the early 1970s, Mr. Haberstroh started a hang-gliding business in the undeveloped hills of northern San Diego County. After closing Free-Flight of San Diego, he became a courtroom expert for lawsuits filed over the deaths of hang-gliding enthusiasts.
After leaving SDSU, Haberstroh spent 12 years teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. He retired in 1995 and moved to Rancho Bernardo.
Haberstroh is survived by his wife, Therese; daughter, Mary Therese Hits of Lewiston, Idaho; as well as his sons Mark Haberstroh of La Mesa; Paul Haberstroh of Lake Havasu City, Ariz.; John Haberstroh of Chicago; Matthew Haberstroh of Medford, Mass.; and Joe Haberstroh of Bay Shore, N.Y.; and 10 grandchildren. A son, Philip Haberstroh, died in 1991.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former newspaperman and San Diego State University advertising professor Jack Haberstroh died Saturday at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla from complications of a stroke. He was 80.Haberstroh was born in Chicago in 1926, and his family moved to Los Angeles in the early 1930s. He sold advertising for the now-defunct Los Angeles Daily Mirror and […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"Jack Haberstroh, 80, SDSU professor","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sdnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}