Nora Kerr, a longtime editor at The New York Times and a former editor of its Sunday Travel section, died yesterday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. She was 61 and a Manhattan resident.
Ms. Kerr, who retired from the paper this month, died after having been ill with cancer for some years, her husband, Gordy Thompson, said.
Ms. Kerr joined The Times in 1976 as a copy editor; she was later editor of the paper's Westchester Weekly section and an assistant metropolitan editor. She was editor of the Travel section from 1986 to 1989, and was afterward an editor in The Times Magazine and the Arts & Leisure and Culture sections.
Nora Kerr was born on Nov. 19, 1943, in Cairo, where her parents had met during the war; the family later moved to New Jersey. She attended William Paterson College and Rutgers University and from 1967 to 1976 was a reporter and editor at The Bergen Record.
Ms. Kerr's first marriage ended in divorce. In addition to Mr. Thompson, a retired manager of Internet services at The Times, Ms. Kerr is survived by their son, Andrew Kerr-Thompson; her mother, Hermine, of Wayne, N.J.; and a sister, Jacqueline Kerr Harrold, of Benton, Pa.