Thomas Fleming, a columnist and editor for San Francisco’s Sun Reporter, the African American newspaper he helped start in 1944, died Tuesday at a retirement home in San Leandro of congestive heart failure at age 98, the Chronicle reports. He died just a few days before he was to have celebrated his 99th birthday. His friends plan to turn his planned birthday party on Saturday into a celebration of his life, according to the Chronicle obit, which gives details. (Chronicle file photo, 2004, by Paul Chinn.)