[PRCo] "Mac" McGrew

[Derrick J Brashear]

John Swindler pointed this out.

 	News Obituaries
Obituary: M.F. "Mac" McGrew / Foremost authority on metal typefaces, worked at 
Ketchum
June 1, 1912 - Feb. 28, 2007

Sunday, March 04, 2007
By Mike Bucsko, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

At age 14, M.F. "Mac" McGrew bought a Kelsey Excelsior printing press, designed 
as a "parlour press" for hobbyists.

It was the beginning of Mr. McGrew's lifelong love of printing and typesetting, 
a romance that culminated six decades later in his publication of a reference 
book on American metal typefaces that has become the bible on the subject.

Seen as the leading authority on typefaces, Mr. McGrew received inquiries from 
around the world from those in the printing and design business who were 
stumped by a certain typeface, said Mr. McGrew's son, Jon, of Kingston, N.Y.

Mr. McGrew was also one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in 
Chartiers, Washington County.

Mr. McGrew, 94, died Wednesday of complications from pneumonia at the Asbury 
Heights retirement community in Mt. Lebanon, where he had lived for the past 20 
years.

Born in Chattanooga, Tenn., Marion Foreman McGrew moved to Crafton with his 
parents and younger sister in 1916. Mr. McGrew's interest in typefaces may have 
first been stirred by his father, Carl, an architect who specialized in 
inscriptional lettering, that is part of the architecture of buildings. The 
Chamber of Commerce Building, Downtown, is an example of Carl McGrew's work, 
said Lucinda Dyjak of Ben Avon, Mac McGrew's daughter.

In high school. Mr. McGrew experimented with typewriter typefaces and their use 
in portraits. A typewriter typeface portrait he made of President Franklin D. 
Roosevelt later appeared in "Ripley's Believe It or Not," his daughter said.

Mr. McGrew worked at a few printing companies in Pittsburgh while he attended 
the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, before he 
opened his own print shop in Crafton. After a stint in the Army during World 
War II, Mr. McGrew moved back to Pittsburgh and continued to work in the 
printing business.

In 1950, Mr. McGrew got a job as the typographic director at what became the 
Ketchum Advertising agency. He worked at Ketchum until his retirement in 1977.

Over the years, Mr. McGrew wrote hundreds of articles about typefaces for 
various publications. He began work when he retired on his classic reference, 
American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, which was first published in 
1986.

Mr. McGrew's encyclopedic knowledge of typefaces made him the person to seek 
for companies and individuals with questions, including Adobe and other 
companies that design computer software for the printing and graphic design 
business, his son said.

In addition to his son and daughter, Mr. McGrew is survived by a grandson. A 
memorial service for Mr. McGrew will be at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at Asbury 
Heights, 700 Bower Hill Road, Mt. Lebanon.