Walter "Buzz" Storey wrote about institutions for so long that he became one.

Mr. Storey, a newspaperman in Fayette County for 61 years, died Monday in Uniontown Hospital. He was 82. The cause of death was pneumonia and organ failure.

He spent his whole career in Uniontown, starting on the staff of the old Daily News Standard in 1940 and finishing as the town's unofficial but most trusted historian.

Mr. Storey's 1994 book, "Stories of Uniontown and Fayette County," remains the definitive source on the ups and downs of a blue-collar place.

"I still keep it on my desk as a reference," said Mark O'Keefe, executive editor of the Uniontown Herald-Standard.

Mr. Storey published the book with a $14,000 loan from Robert E. Eberly, a Uniontown gas and oil magnate. Eberly considered Mr. Storey's knowledge of Fayette County history unparalleled.

Much of Mr. Storey's research began with his newspaper work. He rose from reporter to top-ranking editor of the Daily News Standard, now the Uniontown Herald-Standard. He ran the news department for two years, from 1979 to 1981.

He might have had his greatest influence on the paper from 1954 to 1979, when he was city editor.

"He ran a tight ship. He cared about deadlines, accuracy and fairness," said Val Laub, the Herald-Standard's publisher.

Mr. Storey's biggest story came in December 1962, when 37 men died in the Robena Mine explosion in Greene County. Mr. Storey left the office to supervise his paper's coverage of the disaster. He ended up writing as well as editing, sleeping just eight hours during a three-day stretch.

Later in the 1960s he wrote a humor column, patterned after Erma Bombeck's. Hard news, however, remained his first interest.

When a flood hit Uniontown on Election Day 1985, Mr. Storey hopped aboard a helicopter and covered the story. At the time he was 63 years old and working as editor of the Herald-Standard's editorial page, a job that was supposed to keep him in the office.

Mr. Storey retired from the Herald-Standard in 1987, but he continued to write a weekly column for the next 14 years. Most of those columns were historical accounts of life in coal country.

In retirement, Mr. Storey became involved in civic affairs, serving on the Uniontown and Fayette County redevelopment authorities. Storey Square in downtown Uniontown was named in his honor.

He is survived by his wife, Polly Doorley Storey; daughters Jeanne Baugh of Mount Washington and Beth Evancheck of Carmel, Ind.; and sons Jeff of Goshen, N.Y., Jerome of Uniontown, Philip of Boston, and Ted of Medina, Ohio.

A funeral is scheduled at 11 a.m. tomorrow in St. John the Evangelist Church, Uniontown.