Mervin Aubespin, fifth president of the National Association of Black Journalists, who led the organization into its growth age, died June 26 at a hospice in California. He passed days short of his 87th birthday. Aubespin succumbed to colon cancer, said Betty Winston Baye of Louisville, a colleague and friend who visited him last month at the hospice. “The room had his paintings, and Sarah Vaughan was playing,” Baye said. “He was not conscious,” but believe he could hear me. Merv was a soldier. He outlived many of his close friends.” Aubespin was elected in 1983 during a raucous contest in which the…