Yesterday, friends and former colleagues recalled him as a giving person who was almost always fun to be around.
"He was a generous, generous guy," said Lon Teter, a New York Times editor who worked with Mr. Fish at The Inquirer and before that at the Wichita Eagle in Kansas, where both covered county government.
"Larry always had this delightful, wicked sense of humor," Teter said. "It was apparent very early in his reporting career."
Typical of Mr. Fish's wit was a brief 1990 item about the papier-mache landmarks depicting the Pep Boys, Manny, Moe and Jack. In an antismoking gesture, the cigar was being removed from Manny's hands.
"It's part of a subtle effort to clean up and freshen the appeal of the 1940s-era trademark trio," Mr. Fish wrote, "though the shiny hairstyles on Jack and Moe indicate they still have a Brylcreem dependency."
After leaving The Inquirer three years ago, Mr. Fish was a writer in HR Communications at Vanguard Group. There he joined Craig Stock, a Vanguard principal and former Inquirer business editor. At the Inquirer, Stock asid, "Other writers would sometimes go to Larry for help. I used to call him the 'lead doctor. "
"Man, could that guy write a lead," said Glenn Burkins, now a top editor at the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina and a former Inquirer reporter. "Whenever Fish told me he liked a lead of mine, I took it as high praise."
"Larry was a meticulous and elegant writer," said Paul Schweizer, an Inquirer business editor who worked with Mr. Fish.
When Mr. Fish, a railroad buff, left the business staff to become transportation writer, he was able to unite his vocation with an avocation.
