Roger J. Di Paolo, former editor of the Record-Courier who died Friday of Di Paolo chronicled the news of Portage County for 40 years beginning at the Record-Courier as a reporter in 1977 when he reported on the protests surrounding the construction of a building on land that intruded on the site where four students were killed on May 4, 1970.

A Roosevelt High School student in 1970, the shootings had a formative effect on Di Paolo’s view of the world. He had an affinity for the underdog, passed on by his father, the late Judge Roger F. Di Paolo, who for several years chaired Democratic Party politics in Portage County