Former NY Times chief shares memoirs

Emma Epstein Asst. Life Editor

In December of 1964, The New York Times Magazine assigned a young Joseph Lelyveld to profile Alan Simpson, the new president of Vassar College.

After giving Lelyveld a tour of the College, the story goes, Simpson brought him home for dinner. Lelyveld felt it rude to take notes during dinner, so he resolved to record the conversation afterwards. After a few strong post-dinner drinks, however, Lelyveld was in no state to compose his notes. He told himself that he would write down everything the next morning. Upon waking, he remembered absolutely nothing.

Lelyveld reflected that at Vassar, he learned what he considers a key rule of journalism: “A reporter who worries about the impression he’s making as opposed to the job he should be doing isn’t being a very good reporter,” he said.

Forty-one years later, with almost four decades of experience at The New York Times, a Pulitzer Prize, and a plethora of Journalism awards under his belt, Lelyveld returned to Vassar to read from his recently published memoir Omaha Blues: A Memory Loop.

After retiring from the job of executive editor of The New York Times in 2001, Lelyveld concentrated on writing his own story, which he published last April.

The memoir focuses on the three key adult figures in Lelyveld’s life: his father, mother, and family friend Ben Lowell.

He described his father, a rabbi, as “warm, welcoming, and absent.” Arthur Lelyveld was too preoccupied with saving the world, from campaigns ranging from Zionism to American civil rights, to involve himself in his son’s life.

Lelyveld’s glamorous, intellectual mother, even more absent in his life than his father, left the family for years to complete her Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York City. Joseph reflected that his mother had “shed enthusiasm for being a rabbi’s wife, and sometimes a mother.”

As a friend and rabbi, Lowell proved the only stable adult in young Lelyveld’s life. He would take Lelyveld to baseball games, and most importantly, listen to the boy ramble. Like the elder Lelyveld, Lowell was also political activist and a suspected communist.

The section of the book which Lelyveld read at Vassar last Monday focused on Arthur and Joseph Lelyveld’s experiences in Mississippi.

In 1964, while campaigning for civil rights, Arthur was beaten in Hattiesburg, MS for walking down the street with two other white men and two black girls. Later that year, mainly due to his widely-publicized experience in the state, Arthur was chosen to deliver a eulogy for one of three slain civil rights workers in Philadephia, MS.

A few months later, Lelyveld traveled back to Philadelphia, MS, where he wrote a lengthy feature that exposed the deep-seated racism of the “responsible majority” of the town.

Lelyveld described this part of his life as when he “diverged” from his father. He described his father as a man involved in every righteous struggle he encountered. His father would often preach to his congregation that, “You know the heart of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9).

Joseph conversely described himself as a “professional bystander,” one who would remain outside the action to gain perspective. Lelyveld deems the role of the reporter as communicating, “what’s really happening here.”

Shortly after he retired, Lelyveld learned what it’s like to be a bystander. He left his editorial post with the Times a week before two airplanes struck the Twin Towers. “It was one of the worst experiences of my life,” he said. “I picked what I believed to be right time to retire for my life and for the paper. It turned out to be the worst possible time. It was fate, but I still felt like a fool.”

Circumstance plays a major role in the entire memoir, as Lelyveld weaves together factual evidence, personal anecdotes, and professional experiences to form exactly what he names the book: A Memory Loop.