Dean Lesher

Dean Stanley Lesher (August 4, 1903 – May 13, 1993) was an American newspaper publisher, founder of the Contra Costa Times and the Contra Costa Newspapers chain. He was also a well-known philanthropist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Lesher was born August 4, 1903, the son of Margaret and David Lesher, in Williamsport, Maryland. His first business experience began when he opened a small ice cream stand at the age of 10. When he was 12, he gave that up for a job in a local tannery; his father was a significant stakeholder in that operation but he opted to let Lesher learn the value of labor. In his high school years Lesher found work as a railroad waybill clerk and was active in sports, playing football, baseball, and soccer.

He attended the University of Maryland, graduating magna cum laude, and proceeded to earn a law degree from Harvard University. He was married to Kathryn Lesher who would die of cancer in 1971. He was later remarried to Margaret Lesher until his death in 1993 at the age of 90. In 1997 Margaret Lesher drowned under mysterious circumstances in Bartlett Lake in Arizona while on a camping trip with her husband of six months Collin "T.C." Thorstenson.

Though he had a successful legal practice in Kansas City, Missouri, Lesher grew bored with law and found himself fascinated with newspapers, especially their ability, in his view, to shape and improve a community. Initially, he acquired a small paper in Nebraska but he found no way to generate a profit.

In 1941, at the age of 39 Lesher and his family moved to California where he purchased a small daily, the Merced Sun-Star. While the local economy was booming with the war effort, civilian rationing meant empty store shelves and little to no advertising revenues. Lesher invited some prominent local business owners to dinner and asked them to advertise for the sake of the area paper. In this way, he solidified the paper's financial position.

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