Larry Fiquette, a rail-thin, soft-spoken guy from Alabama who came to work at the Post-Dispatch for three decades, held two distinctions.

As the newspaper's Reader's Advocate, he was a member of a select group of about 30 editors at papers across the country who represented the interests of readers.

At home, he was one of an unknown number of people in the metropolitan area who owned his own bomb shelter.

Lawrence W. Fiquette died Saturday night at DePaul Health Center in Bridgeton. He was 84 and had been a longtime resident of University City before moving to Bridgeton.

Mr. Fiquette was born in Adamsville, Ala., and graduated from the University of Alabama. At 17, he enlisted in the Navy during World War II and served aboard an amphibious assault ship in the Pacific.

He started his career at the Birmingham Post and the Birmingham Post-Herald.

He worked at the Post-Dispatch from 1965 to 1967 before accepting a position on the foreign desk at The New York Times, where he also co-edited a current events journal for children.

The Fiquettes returned to St. Louis because of their young children, who were "not able to play in the streets," he said.

At the Post-Dispatch, he was an editor for the Sunday Pictures magazine and then editor of the Dollars/Sense consumer section.

From 1990 until his retirement in 1995, he served as the paper's Reader's Advocate.

Among the controversial issues that landed in his lap were coverage of the hearings on Clarence Thomas' nomination to the Supreme Court and a firestorm of complaints over the paper's decision against running a graphic anti-abortion advertisement.

The publisher said the three-page ad that included a dismembered doll resembling a newborn baby was in bad taste and contained misrepresentations.

Mr. Fiquette sided with the 5,300 people who helped pay for the ad and were frustrated over their inability to express their viewpoint.

Mr. Fiquette told the St. Louis Journalism Review: "I'm not an apologist for the paper. I'm not set up to defend the paper's practices to the reader. But if I see that that needs to be said, I'm free to say that too."

Mr. Fiquette bought a home on Waterman Avenue in University City and later discovered that a previous owner had built an underground shelter in 1962, following the Cuban missile crisis.

The only use his family found for the shelter, which had become filled with water, he said, was to house a goldfish.

A memorial service for Mr. Fiquette will be at 3 p.m. Friday at the home of Dr. Florian Thomas and Sarah Griesback, at 2 Kingsbury Place in the Central West End.

Among the survivors are a daughter, Suzanne Decker of Spokane, Wash.; three sons, Alan Fiquette of Bridgeton, Jeffrey Fiquette of Defuniak Springs, Fla., and Todd Fiquette of Lighthouse Point, Fla.; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. His wife, Sidney, died in 1993.