STEWART KAMPEL –
NEW YORK TIMES EDITOR
WHERE DID YOU GO TO SCHOOL?
I grew up on the border of
Williamsburg and Bedford-
Stuyvesant, with an older brother,
now deceased, and both parents. We
lived there until my senior year at
Boys High School, when we moved
to Brighton Beach.
After high school, I attended the
Baruch School of City College. In
my freshman year, I became a sports
reporter for the undergraduate newspaper,
The Ticker. I soon became the
sports editor and in my junior year
became editor in chief.
For the summer I sought a job at
the New York Times. On the day I
applied, The Times had placed an ad
for office boys. To eliminate unqualified
people, the employment office
asked applicants to take a spelling
test: determine which of 10 words
were misspelled. I must have done
alright because I was offered a job
in the Wire Room, where messages,
and stories appeared, and I then
distributed them to the news room.
After a couple of weeks, the
employment office remembered
that I knew how to type, and she
guessed that I would be returning to college,
so I was offered a part-time job as the assistant
to the secretary to the foreign news editor, who
had just won the Pulitzer Prize for international
reporting. I worked four hours a day filing letters,
typing envelopes, etc. I did that through
my senior year.
I applied to the Columbia School of
Journalism and asked the foreign news editor,
who was the president of the alumni association,
for a recommendation. At Columbia,
I was awarded a half-tuition scholarship and
worked at another part-time job at The Times,
on the news desk preparing reports for WQXR.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR FAMILY
I met my future wife at a house-plan (poor
man's fraternity) dance while I was a freshman
and she was still in high school. Susan and I
married in Brooklyn upon my graduation from
Columbia while she was an undergraduate at
Brooklyn College. Susan worked for many
years for the Social Security Administration,
helping people get their benefits.
We have three daughters and nine grandchildren.
Caroline Danziger, a graduate of SUNY
Buffalo who lives in Plainview, is a pre-school
teacher and Hebrew School teacher. She and
her husband, Mitchell, a State Supreme Court
Justice, have two sons, Sam and Josh, and a
daughter, Hannah.
Daughter number 2, in age, is Debra
Magerman. She and her husband David have
four children. They live in Merion Station,
Pa. They formerly lived in Setauket, where
David, who has Ph.D., worked for the hedge
fund Renaissance Technologies. He is now a
venture capitalist. Debra, who graduated from
Smith College, is active in Jewish philanthropic
activities. David founded the Kohelet Yeshiva
in Lower Merion. Their eldest son, Elijah, is at
the University of Pennsylvania and Zachary is
doing a gap year in Israel before enrolling at
Penn. Their daughters, Sydney and Lexie, are
students at Kohelet.
Our third daughter, Allison Singer, is a
graduate of SUNY New Paltz and a mortgage
specialist for Citibank. Her husband, Marc, is
a financial consultant specializing in health
care. They have two teenage children, Molly
and Jesse, and live in Plainview.
WHAT ABOUT YOUR PROFESSIONAL
CAREER?
After six months’ service in the Army,
where I trained as a medic, I rejoined
the New York Times as a clerk. A few
months later, I transferred to the Reserve
News Desk, a training spot for copy editors.
After a long strike I was assigned
to a copy desk that handled obituaries,
society and cultural news. Years later
I moved to the Metropolitan Desk as
a copy editor and then got promoted
to be an assistant to the Metropolitan
editor, Arthur Gelb. I was one of two
editors in charge on weekends during
the New York fiscal crisis and the Son of
Sam stories. Later I was asked to be the
editor of the Long Island Weekly section.
I held that job for 20 years, running a
Sunday section, choosing stories and
hiring freelance writers.
At the same time, I taught journalism
classes, 16 years at City College
and 15 years at New York University.
A number of my students went on to
full-time careers at newspapers and on
television as reporters, editors, foreign
correspondents, investigative specialists,
best-selling authors, etc.
I am the author, with Nate Cott, of the
book “Fly Without Fear,” a self-help book for
people afraid to fly. For the last dozen years I
have been reviewing fiction and non-fiction for
Hadassah Magazine.
WHEN DID YOU COME TO NORTH SHORE
TOWERS?
We lived in East Northport, on Long
Island, for 42 years, where we raised our
family and moved here 10 years ago. We also
have had a home in Wellington, Florida,
since 2004. In Florida I run a wine club, a
current events discussion group and a book
club. For the book club, I have the author
of the book under discussion visit us via
Skype or Zoom. Susan runs an annual bookand
author luncheon that draws 500 people
and benefits a research fund at Brandeis
University.
At North Shore Towers I enjoy playing
tennis and swimming. Susan does water aerobics
and plays mah jongg. We've traveled
extensively and we love it here.
North Shore Towers resident Stewart Kampel says, “I have been extremely fortunate – and
proud – to have worked for more than 40 years for the greatest newspaper in the world and to
have contributed, I hope, to the enlightenment and enjoyment of our readers. Moreover, not
too many people get to work for an organization under the protection of the First Amendment.
And to have the greatest partner in the world, my wife Susan, without whom none of this
would have been possible.”
Susan and Stewart Kampel
4 NORTH SHORE TOWERS COURIER ¢ March 2021