Stuart Finley, 84, a retired WRC broadcaster and award-winning producer who also was operations director for the Lake Barcroft community in Falls Church, died July 20 at Northern Virginia Community Hospital after a stroke.
Mr. Finley, a native of Port Washington, N.Y., began his career as a radio announcer at stations in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Philadelphia. He worked briefly at WRC in Washington before entering the Navy at the start of World War II. He served nearly four years in the Navy before returning to the NBC-owned station.
In 1954, he produced "Our Beautiful Potomac," a series of 50 documentaries that won the Sylvania Award for outstanding local public service programs. In 1967, he won an Emmy for the independently produced documentary "Third Pollution," about solid waste garbage dumps.
He was working on a radio program called Capital Scrapbook in 1950 when he learned about Lake Barcroft, a one-time reservoir for the City of Alexandria that had been developed into a suburban community. He moved into a new house there in 1954 and, first as a volunteer and later as an employee, became the lake's operations director. He helped organize support for the Lake Barcroft Watershed Improvement District, which financed reconstruction of the dam that maintains Lake Barcroft after it was damaged during Hurricane Agnes in 1972. He supervised dam operations, dredging and aeration of the lake.
He was past president of the Lake Barcroft Community Association, past chairman of the Northern Virginia Soil and Water Conservation District and a member of the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation's dam safety technical advisory committee.
Survivors include his wife, Margaret Finley of Falls Church; two sons, Robert Finley of Falls Church and Frank Finley of Reston; and two grandchildren.