Dick Cardwell, leader for open government in Indiana and longtime defender and advocate of newspapers, dies at 86

Cardwell with his wife Marcia

Services will be held this weekend for Richard "Dick" Cardwell, who served more than 35 years as executive director and general counsel of the Hoosier State Press Association and led the fight in the late 1970s for passage of Indiana's open-meetings and open-records laws, of which he was the chief author. He died Sept. 1 and was 86. A private interment will be held Saturday and a celebration of his life will be held from 2 to 6 p.m. ET Sunday at the Country Club of Indianapolis. He was a big golfer.

Cardwell represented the newspaper industry before the Indiana General Assembly on First Amendment causes and chaired the publication board at Indiana University. He won many awards for his work and was a member of the course-rating panel for Golf Digest, which let him "travel all over the country and world playing the finest golf courses," his obituary says. "He kept meticulous records of his golf rounds, including number of holes played, strokes, and which clubs he used. As an example, his stroke average for over 140 rounds played in 2000, at 67 years old, was 75. His family never tired of hearing his stories of playing golf with Arnold Palmer or Sam Snead. Dick never met a stranger and could strike up a conversation and find common ground with virtually anyone." Cardwell and his wife Marcia, who died in 2017, had four children, 11 grandchildren, and 11 great-grandchildren.