Robert L. Bartley died Dec. 10, 2003. In January 2003 he became The Wall Street Journal's editor emeritus after more than 30 years guiding the paper's editorial pages. He was author of the weekly "Thinking Things Over" column, which had been written by three previous Journal editors, starting in 1934.

Over his career, Mr. Bartley won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, a Gerald Loeb Award and a Citation for Excellence from the Overseas Press Club of America. The week before he died, President Bush announced that he was being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor. He was author of a book on Reagan administration economic policy, "The Seven Fat Years: And How to Do It Again," published in 1992 by the Free Press.

Mr. Bartley joined the Journal in 1962 and served as a staff reporter in the Chicago and Philadelphia bureaus before joining the editorial page staff in New York in 1964. He was appointed editor of the editorial page in 1972, editor of the Journal in 1979 and a vice president of Dow Jones & Co. in 1983. He held a bachelor's degree in journalism from Iowa State University and a master's degree in political science from the University of Wisconsin. He has received honorary degrees from Macalester College, Babson College and Adelphi University.