Phil Yost, 63, Bluffton native and Bluffton High School graduate, died at his California home on April 18, 2014. He was a former San Jose Mercury News editorial writer.
The following obituary was posted on the Mercury News.
Phil Yost was a gentle and decent man, a writer with an ethical compass that belied the stereotype of the cynical journalist. He was known for an unerring sense of fairness, a willingness to consider an argument from another side.
The former Mercury News editorial writer also possessed a wry and wicked sense of humor, a light touch that emerged in his writing and life. Stumped in the search for a joke, other writers turned to Yost, who could supply pun, punch line or lyric with deftness.
Yost died at his Palm Haven home in San Jose on Friday morning after a three-year battle with sarcoma, a form of cancer. He was 63.
"Phil was one of the most analytical thinkers I've ever known,'' said Barbara Marshman, the Mercury News editorial page editor. "He was witty, he could be funny, he was great with a zinger. But his main contribution was to be very thoughtful.''
Yost worked for the Mercury News for more than a quarter-century, serving as a state editor in the early 1980s before moving to the editorial pages under then-Editor Rob Elder.
For many years in the 1990s and early 2000s, he covered state politics for the editorial pages, often staying in a rental apartment in Sacramento during the week. He earned a reputation as a fair-minded analyst of the Legislature and governor during contentious times.
"His most aggravating trait was his unflinching fairness,'' said Supervisor Joe Simitian, a legislator who later hired Yost and was speaking ironically. "It got to be a running gag with us. I'd say something, he'd look at me, and I'd just know, I'm gonna get the full fairness treatment.''
Yost's professional commitment was leavened with humor. In the 1986 Gridiron Show, a journalists' spoof, he played then-Congressman Ed Zschau, who during a senatorial campaign had switched his position to support funding of the Nicaraguan contras.
With a remarkably strong voice for a journalist -- privately, he loved opera -- Yost sang an old John Denver song with lyrics updated for Zschau: "Thank God I'm a Contra Boy.''
Philip William Yost was born in Chicago on Feb. 6, 1951, the oldest of four children of a Mennonite minister-academic and a homemaker. Yost attended Earlham College in Indiana, where he played soccer and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1972.
During the Vietnam war, Yost served as a conscientious objector, tutoring underprivileged children in Cincinnati in a Mennonite program.
Then, after stints at the Middletown (Ohio) Journal and the Cincinnati Post, he joined the Mercury News as a copy editor in 1981. His wife, Susan, became a sales and marketing manager for Apple, Palm Inc. and Handspring.
After covering the San Jose mayor's race in 2006, Yost left the newspaper and later joined the Silicon Valley Leadership Group as a vice-president of communications. In 2010, after he left SVLG, he was recruited by Simitian to be a policy and press aide in his legislative office.
Yost is survived by his wife; his parents, Burton and Elnore Yost, Bluffton, Ohio; his sisters Beth (Ross) Sheldrake, Calgary, Canada; and Anita (Tim) Reimer, Wichita, Kan; and a brother, Peter (Debra) Yost, Stillwater, Minn. Services are pending.
-- Mercury News
