The Rev. George Papadeas, the first Greek Orthodox man to become ordained in the United States, died Friday at Halifax Health Medical Center, in Port Orange, Florida, at age 93.

Father George was chaplain of the New York Press Club in the 1950's when the Club was known as the New York Metropolitan Newspaper Reporters Association. He was the first Greek Orthodox clergyman to hold that post.

Papadeas, who served his church in a varied and colorful career lasting nearly 70 years, was pastor of St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Daytona Beach from 1975 to 1983. From his home in South Daytona in "retirement," he established two more Greek Orthodox churches, in the Inverness and Ocala areas.

He was born on June 5, 1918, in Altoona, Pa.

The year 1942 was momentous for Papadeas. He married Bess Matthews and graduated from the Greek Orthodox Seminary in Pomfret Center, Connecticut. He was ordained a priest in 1945.

Because of his background, he helped bridge the gap between the Greece-based church and its American-born attendees, many of whom were children who didn't learn the Greek language, said his son Tim, a family spokesman.

"He was like a Steve Jobs of religion," Tim Papadeas said. "What Steve Jobs did for Apple, (Fr. George) did for our Greek Orthodox church."

When he was pastor of St. Paul's Parish in Hempstead, N.Y., Papadeas presided over the three Weeping Icons in the early 1960s. He later wrote a book about the experience, which brought much attention and thousands of people through the church to see the Weeping Madonna.

In the 1960s, he translated the Beautiful Orthodox Holy Week Services into English, as well as later completing other important translations. He helped establish a summer camp for American-born Greek Orthodox children in Greece, which in 1970 became the Ionian Village Camp, helping hundreds of people learn about their roots and their faith.

It was at St. Demetrios where he and parishioner Irene Koutouzis started the church's popular Greek Festival, held every November.

In 2004, Bess, his wife of 62 years, died. Together, the Papadeases had five children, nine grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

Papadeas was a man who served his church in eight decades but felt he was the one who was blessed.

"If we believe in divine grace," he said in a 2010 interview, "God comes to people with open hearts."

Gloria Clyne, the first female page in the history of NBC, died July 20th at her home in Greenwood Lake, New York. She was 85 years old.

Traditionally, NBC pages (guides for visitors) at the network's famed headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Center (nicknamed "30 Rock") were men. But when the guys were drafted during World War II, NBC had no choice but to take on women. Clyne was the first of four "girls" to give guided tours and greet important guests.

Following the war, Gloria Clyne stayed on at NBC, moving up the ladder as a production assistant and a segment producer for Today show weatherman, Al Roker. She retired from the network in 1999, but put on her old page uniform last year and posed outside 30 Rock for a profile that appeared on March 21, 2010, in the New York Post."


Clyne told the newspaper: "It feels good to be a page again. This jacket certainly fits. I never got rich, but it was a priceless experience. I spent my life there.”

The NBC page program began in 1933. It's said that more than 7,000 people apply. Among the requirements are a college degree and "related broadcast experience." Only 60 to 80 pages are chosen each year, and most go on to careers in broadcasting.

Among notables who were once NBC pages: Steve Allen, Kate Jackson, former Disney chairman Michael Eisner, game show creator Chuck Barris, "Captain Kangaroo" Bob Keeshan, newsman Ted Koppel, actor/singer Gordon MacRae, personalities Regis Philbin and Gene Rayburn, actress Eva Marie Saint, and longtime Today weatherman, Willard Scott.

Tributes to Gloria's big heart and generous spirit have been plentiful in the days following her passing. New York Press Club governor Phil O'Brien worked with Gloria at NBC for a number of years and shares these recollections:

"I'll always remember some stories she would tell. Like the time in the 1940s when she and a co-worker were leaving 30 Rock to go home in the evening. It was shortly before Christmas. As they walked into the plaza, her friend turned to Gloria and said "Look, there's the man who lights the Christmas tree." They stopped walking and from just yards away watched the big tree light up. Today, of course, tens of thousands pack the plaza for hours for a glimpse of the tree lighting.

Another time also shortly after Word War II, a man with a clipboard came into the work area where Gloria was assigned and asked everybody for their attention. "I have an announcement. Everyone on this floor will be relocated to [a different] floor in order to make room for NBC's new project...." And then, Gloria said, the man sort of stumbled over the next word. "Tele...telev..television!"

On her 50th anniversary at NBC, Gloria was invited as a guest on Live at 5. Anchor Sue Simmons asked Gloria what she thought was her greatest accomplishment. Gloria's answer came quick. She did not talk about the many stories she produced, wrote and researched in New York, across the country or even in places like Vietnam. Gloria unhesitatingly quipped: "The day I won equal pay from this network!"

Tributes are plentiful from other individuals whom Gloria tutored and mentored at NBC:

July 24, 2011
I know your reading this somewhere. I can't express how lucky I am to have known you, loved you and been loved by you. I will emulate your spirit and joy for the rest of my life and I can only hope to be one tenth of the inspiration to others that you have been. A great light flicker and died and we are all deminished by your passing.
Kitte Tuckfelt, Munhall, Pennsylvania

July 23, 2011
Gloria was the heart and soul of NBC. The life lessons she taught to hundreds, if not thousands, will never be forgotten. Funny, thoughtful, wise, brilliant, and a great story teller - Gloria was a GIFT to us....plain and simple. I will miss her terribly, but grateful I can say I knew her. God Bless you, Gloria Clyne.
Ann Guaglione (Dorrian), Commack, New York

July 22, 2011
Gloria put a smile on your face even if you didn't want to smile. The life of the party & the party was life itself. A wonderful teacher, (I interned under her in the early 80's) a friend and being one of her "kids" was a priviledge. I will miss your joy for living, but you will continue to inspire me throughout life. Rest in Peace Dear Friend. Love you always & forever.
Mark Mirsky, Oceanside, New York

The New York Press Club was thrilled when Bill Gallo agreed to create a cover for the 2010 edition of the Club's Byline Magazine. It was in 2010 that the Press Club presented Gallo with its President's Award for lifetime achievment. The cover and several other drawings created for the magazine by Bill are included throughout this obituary from the New York Daily News.

Bill Gallo, sports cartoonist at the Daily News for more than half a century and whose career at the paper spanned 70 years, died of complications from pneumonia at 88 in White Plains Hospital late last night. His passing marks the close of what seemed always to be an endless supply of ink and fun in the pages of The News. Inside our building, Gallo would walk around the big newsroom talking sports, bouncing ideas off coworkers or showing off his latest, comical work to everyone's delight.

"My father is a lasting legend to New York, and to New York sports," said Gallo's son Greg. "He will be forever thought of as a great cartoonist for the Daily News, but he will also be remembered as the gentleman he was to all the people he came across, everybody in the streets of the city. People loved him because he was a special human being."

In recent months, while he fought off emphysema and a series of medical setbacks, Gallo continued to draw his cartoons and write columns from hospital beds and his home, surrounded by trays of colored pencils and erasers, dark pens and paint brushes sticking out of a Dixie cup. He would send his creations by overnight mail or ask a coworker to bring them to the office, checking in often by phone with editors.

"I'm just as enthusiastic about work today as I've ever been," Gallo said shortly before his death. "If I wasn't sick I'd be putting out some great stuff."

His last cartoon was just fine, appearing in the News on Tuesday, April 19. Appropriately enough, it featured the beloved Bertha, who was shown window shopping for a wardrobe while hoping expecting, even to receive an invitation to the royal wedding in London.

"The passing of our great cartoonist, colleague and friend Bill Gallo marks the end of an era,'' said Daily News Chairman & Publisher Mortimer B. Zuckerman. "From the time he arrived at the Daily News as a fresh-faced kid determined to make his mark in the city and the world, to the very end when he battled his final illness with grit, courage and grace - rarely skipping a cartoon or a column - Bill was a class act."

Gallo was an entrenched New York institution, yet somehow always remained vibrant and topical.

His drawings grace both a midtown art gallery and the Baseball Hall of Fame. Although Gallo was known to most as the creator of his daily sports cartoon, he was also many other things during his long life: war hero, artist, family man, writer and boxing expert.

"Bill Gallo was a great artist but an even greater guy," said Daily News Editor in Chief Kevin R. Convey. "He had an eye for the humor and absurdity of life, a knack for capturing the city and its characters and a heart as big as the place he called home. We'll miss him terribly, and we'll never forget him. Our hearts go out to his family and friends."

His friends came from all walks of life, ranging from Muhammad Ali to New York police commissioner Ray Kelly. Gallo made time for peers, athletes, officials and fans, appearing at innumerable charitable events. He juggled many art and book projects, well into his 80s. He could hold court at any city tavern or ballroom with tales of sports events from a bygone era.

"I can't imagine the Daily News without Bill," said Teri Thompson, managing editor for sports. "It was an incredible honor to work with someone who so loved our business, and could take you back to Joe DiMaggio and Joe Louis in one moment and to Tiger Woods and Carmelo Anthony the next, all with a smile and a flick of the pen."

Gallo came to newspapering naturally. He was born in Manhattan on Dec. 28, 1922, the son of Frank and Henrietta Gallo. His father had immigrated to America from Spain and worked for La Prensa, before dying at 36 of pneumonia when Bill was only 11. That tragedy marked Gallo in many ways, as he vowed to follow his dad's footsteps into the business.

Gallo studied art in high school and eventually landed a job as a copy boy at The News. "I did everything except sweep the floor, and I did that too," Gallo said.

He joined the Marine Corps during World War II, fighting with the Fourth Division in Roi-Namur, Tinian and Iwo Jima.

"He was an all-around superhero, an American hero," said Kelly, who met Gallo nearly 30 years ago at an event for Marine veterans and remained his close friend. "There were 25,000 American lives lost at Iwo Jima, and Bill survived to become this man of amazing energy."

He returned after four years to The News as a picture clerk, while enrolling under the GI Bill at Columbia University and what later became the School of Visual Arts. He worked days, attended classes at night.

In 1950, he married Dolores Rodriguez and became a full-time artist at the News. He was generously shown the ropes by sports cartoonist Leo O'Mealia. Gallo's first published cartoon in The News was of the boxer Kid Gavilan, which so impressed sports editor Charlie Hoerter that it was used in place of an action photograph.

After O'Mealia died in 1960, Gallo was promoted to the sports cartoonist's post he held until his death. The job was challenging, from the start. He was assigned to illustrate the Yankees-Pirates World Series that year, which see-sawed back and forth until Bill Mazeroski's homer in the ninth inning of Game 7.

"I had to change the feature part of that cartoon three times before Mazeroski ended it - and almost me," Gallo told The Sporting News in 1961.

While Gallo enjoyed chronicling the successes of the Yankees, he always seemed to have a greater affinity for the poor sufferers of the world, such as the early Mets. He loved Casey Stengel, and invented Basement Bertha to represent a faithful, distressed supporter. His kid character, Yuchie, also demonstrated great empathy for losers.

Over the years, Gallo would create nearly as many regular characters as he received awards. Those lampooned including George Steinbrenner himself never seemed to mind, even considering such treatment an honor. Gallo's work could also elicit aching emotion, as he did with the cartoon showing Thurman Munson up in heaven.

"No matter who came into the office, no matter what walk of life, Bill would take the time to talk to him and help him," said Delores Thompson, assistant to the sports editor. "On many occasions, he would draw cartoons or portraits of visitors or their kids."

He'd get his ideas from everywhere, and quite often from conversations he overheard on the train while commuting to work from his home in Yonkers. Once he had it figured out, Gallo would require only minutes to visualize and then pen or brush a fresh cartoon on his art board.

"I've enjoyed Bill's work since I was a boy growing up in New Jersey, reading the Daily News every day," said Rick Stromoski, creator of the comic, "Soup to Nutz" and a past president of the National Cartoonists Society. "He was an inspiration as well as a mentor as I got to know him personally. He was a great cartoonist and an even better friend, a class act all the way."

Other cartoonists appreciated him greatly. He received the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Cartoonists Society in 1998. He was awarded the Page One Journalism Award 20 times, along with an achievement award for alumni from the School of Visual Arts.

As a columnist on his favorite sport, Gallo received the James J. Walker Award from the Boxing Writers Association and the Champions Award from the Downtown Athletic Club. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. He wrote movingly last year of his experiences in the Pacific and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

There were honors, banquets and ceremonies. Gallo always reveled in the company and the stories, feeling right at home in the city's melting pot, an expression he loved and lived.

"Because there's where the strength is," he said in his last interview, conducted on the same day he entered the hospital for the last time. "Right there lies the essence."

"Nobody was quite sure what that name, 'Gallo,' was … Italian, Irish, Puerto Rican?" Sugar said. "So all ethnic groups wanted to honor him and he accepted honors from everybody, never turned one down."

Gallo continued working prodigiously, well past conventional retirement age, always searching for new outlets for his talents.

"He had a tremendous work ethic, maybe because he was a Depression Era kid," said Phil Cornell, a News features editor who worked with Gallo on his 2000 book, "Drawing a Crowd: Bill Gallo's Greatest Sports Moments."

"He was always kicking around ideas," Cornell said. "The early death of his father was a defining event for him. He became the man of the house, and that had a profound effect on him."

Gallo wrote of that event in a 2005 column, "This One's for You, Dad":

"For years, after his 11th birthday, the boy's heart ached every Father's Day," he wrote. "The boy was this writer and I'll try not to make this a sad song. It's a song of struggles, survival and triumphs. It's about my father, a newspaperman who died much before his time."

Perhaps that's why Gallo drew countless wedding invitations and marriage proposals and birthday cards for the members of the Daily News staff and for his family and friends. He was honored to be asked, and one of his last drawings was for his granddaughter, Amy.

"Our daughter is getting married in September and he so wanted to make it to that day," said Greg Gallo. "He did a sketch for her for the wedding and he told her, 'I hope I make it, Amy.'"

Bill Gallo is survived by his wife, Dolores; his son, Greg, the former sports editor at the Post; his son, Bill Jr., director of racing for the National Steeplechase Association in Maryland; a brother, Henry; and four granddaughters, Stephanie, Amy, Marianna and Isabella and a great granddaughter, Alexa Rose.

Plus, of course, Basement Bertha and Yuchie.

He was a master mediator. He was also was a highly successful real estate investor. He loved art and artists -- and helped them in their careers. He was an environmentalist and philanthropist.

I saw Ted Kheel in action for five decades. I witnessed the effectiveness of his skills. I saw leaders of management and labor succumb to his charm. For Ted was more than a skillful lawyer and a good negotiator. He loved people. And, in the searing labor disputes that threatened New York and the nation during his amazing career, his was the calm voice that never gave up, the soothing voice of moderation and peace.

With Ted, who died last Friday, I bent my own rule of never becoming too close to a source. Ted and I became good friends. He was my lawyer for 40 years. I shall miss his warmth and his generosity of spirit.

When New York was paralyzed by a transit strike in the first week of January 1966, Mike Quill, leader of the Transport Workers Union, became the pariah of New York. As New Yorkers walked to work, they had this vision of Quill [as described by the new mayor, John Lindsay] as the villain of this affair. Kheel never went along with that image. He treated both Quill and the leader of transit management, Joe O’Grady, as friends. They responded eventually to his gentle prodding and, after Quill and other union leaders were jailed, the strike was finally settled.

The three of them in the beginning of the strike were in a royal suite on the top floor of the Americana Hotel (now the Sheraton) and, although he never betrayed anyone, Kheel would occasionally fill me in on the personalities of the participants and how they related to each other. I learned that Quill in the confines of that suite was perfectly affable. But, every now and then, when he emerged. he would wave his cane and, to reporters, denounce the powers that be and particularly the Mayor, whose name Quill deliberately mis-pronounced as “Lindsley.”

“Mike is wonderful. He’s some character,” Kheel told me. The mediator truly had an affection for each of the warring parties. He thought Joe O”Grady, the management person, was great too, in his solemn, cautious way.

Over the years, in addition to the subway and bus strike, Kheel helped end strikes involving New York’s newspapers and teachers. Mayor Wagner asked Kheel for help in ending the 114-day newspaper strike of 1962-3 and President Lyndon Johnson turned to Kheel in 1964 to prevent a nationwide rail strike.

The New York Times said that Kheel has been called “the most influential peacemaker in New York City in the last half century” and the “master locksmith of deadlock bargaining.” And it was estimated that, as this city’s leading mediator and arbitrator, he had helped solved 30,000 disputes.

He loved people and he loved good food. He was a connosieur of wines. He even kept a cache of his favorite wines in the Windows on the World restaurant on the top of the World Trade Center.

There was irony in that because Kheel had bitterly opposed the Port Authority when it went into the real estate business. He didn’t think it should ever have built the World Trade Center or the restaurant. But, once the restaurant was built, he thought it was a good idea to keep his wines there. In a wisecrack that was eerily prophetic, he said to me one day: “I like the restaurant. They should tear down the rest of the building and just leave the restaurant.”

Kheel was a philanthropist. He heavily endowed several groups, including the Earth Pledge Foundation, which worked for environmental progress. He had a magic touch for real estate projects. Thus, he purchased several hundred acres of land in Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic and, with a Dominican partner, transformed this slice of the jungle into a great hotel, with two golf courses and numerous restaurants.

But, at the same time, he set up a laboratory at the hotel complex to study tropical plants and diseases. He did this in cooperation with Cornell University, his alma mater, which he supported generously over the many decades of his life.

Ted Kheel was a persistent man. Thus, after trying for many years to help his artist friend, Cristo, win approval to put The Gates into Central Park, he finally succeeded when Mayor Bloomberg said yes. In February, 2005, gates were set up in the park, hung with panels of orange-colored nylon fabric. It was the dead of winter but New Yorkers thronged to the park by the thousands to welcome enthusiastically this winter spectacle.

Kheel failed to achieve his last big goal: making New York’s subways and buses free. He commissioned a study by experts that showed, if fares were removed from subways and buses, the city would not lose revenue. It would gain money because traffic congestion would diminish and business would improve. He tried to sell this idea for the last few years. But politicians and transit experts didn’t buy it.

Ted Kheel was a patient man. He believed that, ultimately, the city would accept his proposal. He favored Bloomberg’s idea of congestion pricing -- charging motorists for entering the city -- provided that was coupled with free mass transit.

“I think,” Kheel said, “that this is something New Yorkers will come to appreciate when they think about it and how good it will be for working people and for people who drive, because there’ll be more using mass transit.”

Was this realistic or was Ted Kheel being Don Quixote, dreaming an impossible dream? Ted told me: “Nothing is impossible. This is a great city and ultimately, we’ll do what has to be done.”

He was 96 years old. And that could be his epitaph: “Nothing is impossible.”

Dow died Saturday in New Jersey after checking himself into a hospital days earlier with severe asthma symptoms, a family spokeswoman said. He was 62.

"I deeply miss him already," said "48 Hours Mystery" executive producer Susan Zirinsky. "He was the most selfless man I have known. It was his humanity, which was felt by everyone he encountered, even in his toughest interviews, that truly defined the greatness of his work."

An inhaler was found on the floor of his car after he checked himself into a Ridgewood hospital on Monday, leading relatives to suspect he had an asthma attack while driving, the spokeswoman said.

Dow's "48 Hours" colleague Peter Van Sent said Sunday that Dow had recently announced his semi-retirement, though he was planning to do several reports in the upcoming season.

"Harold could do it all," wrote Van Sent. "His range left me in awe. Harold could talk to anyone from Presidents to pimps, rock stars and accused murderers. He was the kind of man who could make you feel in minutes like you'd known him for year."

A native of Hackensack, Dow was known off-camera as an enthusiastic colleague with a flair for personal style.

After attending the University of Nebraska at Omaha, he landed a job as the first black TV reporter in Omaha, where he became a co-anchor and talk show host at KETV.

He started with CBS News in 1972 and spent a decade in Los Angeles before moving back to the New York area as coanchor of "CBS News Nightwatch" in 1982.

He went on to become a correspondent for "The CBS Nightly News," "Sunday Morning" and the legal magazine "Verdict."

He was a correspondent on the 1986 special "48 Hours on Crack Street" that led to the creation of the single-topic weekly newsmagazine. He contributed to the first "48 Hours" broadcast in January 1988 and became a full-time correspondent there in 1990.

His prominent early stories included the return of U.S. POWs from Vietnam and the Patty Hearst kidnapping, which included an interview with Hearst in 1976.

He later covered the Lockerbie bombing, the war in Bosnia, the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and the O.J. Simpson case.

He won five Emmys and a Peabody Award for a report on runaways. He was recently recognized by the National Association of Black Journalists for his report about Medgar Evers, which was featured in the CBS News special "Change and Challenge: The Inauguration of Barack Obama."

"The CBS News family has lost one of its oldest and most talented members," said Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports. "His absence will be felt by many and his on-air presence and reporting skills touched nearly all of our broadcasts."

An award-winning sportswriter who covered Muhammad Ali and the earliest Mets teams, Ziegel was also a beloved editor who helped millions of New Yorkers keep their fingers on the pulse of the city's vibrant sports world.

"Vic was a wonderful writer and a tremendous colleague," said Daily News Editor-in-Chief & Deputy Publisher Martin Dunn. "He totally understood the Daily News sports reader, and his columns brought sports alive for them. The sports world will miss him."

Ziegel grew up just off the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, and although he spent his boyhood playing stickball not far from Yankee Stadium, he was the most ardent of Giants fans. In honor of Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World" in 1951, he taught his pet bird to recite, "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!"

He is survived by his wife of 34 years, Roberta; his daughter, Katy; and his sister, Shelly Goldfeder of New Rochelle.

"Vic was a beloved colleague to all of us on the Daily News sports staff. His brilliant sense of humor, unique voice and elegant style made him among the best newspapermen in American journalism," said Daily News managing editor for sports Teri Thompson. "He was an inspiration to everyone he worked with."

Although he was not a smoker, Ziegel learned he had lung cancer in November, and spent his last weeks receiving well-wishes from a long line of friends who recalled his passion for movies, jazz, sports and family.

Victor Ziegel was born in New York City on Aug. 16, 1937. He attended Yeshiva Salanter in the Bronx, Taft High School and City College, where he first began to indulge in his joy of being around newspapers. Soon he was writing about high school basketball for the now-defunct Long Island Press.

Ziegel was soon hired by the New York Post, where he worked as a night sports editor, a baseball beat writer and a columnist until 1976, when he left to pursue a series of journalism projects that included columns for Rolling Stone, New York magazine and Inside Sports, and the creation of a television series based on Jim Bouton's book "Ball Four."

In 1985, Ziegel became the executive sports editor at the Daily News, and remained at the paper for 25 years, becoming a sports columnist. For a time he wrote a column for the city side of the newspaper called "Helluva Town."

"It was really cool," said Ziegel's wife, Roberta. "It was about unusual people in the city, like the man who changes the light bulbs in the Statue of Liberty, or the one-legged bicycle messenger. He was a great storyteller."

Among the numerous awards Ziegel won were the Red Smith Kentucky Derby Award, in 1992 and 1998, and the Nat Fleischer Award for boxing writing in 1983. A member of the Jersey Jazz Society for 20 years, he also belonged to Young Israel of New Rochelle.

"I loved Vic Ziegel. I really loved him. He'd tell you a lot of good stories," horse trainer Nick Zito said Friday at Saratoga. "I remember him telling of the time he interviewed Mike Tyson at the Indiana prison. He was a New York guy. I enjoyed being around him. I miss him. I'm sorry for his family and the Daily News."

In a 28-year career at CBS, he played several prominent roles in radio and television, including as anchorman of the CBS Radio Network's "News-on-the-Hour" national broadcasts in the late 1970s. He also was the executive producer of "The CBS Morning News" network television broadcast from 1974 to 1976 and ran CBS News bureaus in Rome and Athens from 1971 to 1974.

All-news radio was a fledgling format in the early 1960s. The first models failed and there were just a couple of stations in the U.S. when, in 1967, CBS Chairman William Paley decided to make WCBS, his also-ran flagship radio station, an all-news outlet.

He picked a hard-news veteran to do it. Dembo had been running the network's radio news operation as its director, having been brought to the network after stints as news director and executive producer at WCBS Radio, where he initiated the "Up-to-the-Minute" news concept. He had additional hard-news experience from his time at NBC in the 1950s as a producer and reporter for the network and its local television station, WNBC-TV.

Dembo was put in charge of WCBS Radio as its vice president and general manager and assembled a team that included anchors Charles Osgood, Lou Adler, Steve Porter, Jim Harriot and Robert Vaughn, street reporters Ed Bradley and Steve Flanders and sportscaster Pat Summerall. He also hired a future president of CBS News, Ed Joyce, to be his news director.

By 1970, the transformation was complete. WCBS was broadcasting news all the time and, before long, six more CBS Radio station in major markets switched to the successful and durable formula in which CBS Radio remains the national leader to this today.

Returning to the radio network as bureau chief and correspondent, Dembo reported for the CBS News radio documentary series "Newsmark," in addition to his daily "News-on-the-Hour" duties for the CBS Radio Network, a job he held until November 1978. He was then named executive editor for hard-news broadcasts for the CBS Radio Network. He picked up the added title of news director before being made a network vice president in charge of all of CBS Radio in 1982.

Dembo left CBS in 1988 and joined the faculty of Fordham University, where, until just last year, he was a professor of media studies teaching courses on journalistic ethics, the history of radio and television journalism and a class on the Edward R. Murrow era at CBS.

"I've known Joe Dembo as a boss, mentor and good friend for four decades now," said Charles Osgood, anchor of the CBS Radio Network and television's SUNDAY MORNING.

"It's fitting that he spent his last years as a professor at my alma mater, Fordham. Even as a producer and executive Joe was always a great teacher. He certainly taught me a lot."

Joseph T. Dembo was born in Vienna, Austria, and emigrated to the U.S. as a child. He grew up in New Brunswick, N.J., where he was graduated from Rutgers University with a Bachelor of Letters degree in journalism in 1950. He entered broadcasting in 1952 at NBC in New York, where his assignments included Central News Desk supervisor, feature reporter-producer of "Esso Reporter" on WNBC-TV.

He is survived by his wife, Margot and three children, Wendy, David and Robert and grandchildren Elly and Jesse.

Cronkite, whom a major poll once named the "most trusted figure" in American public life, often saw every nuance in his nightly newscasts scrutinized by politicians, intellectuals, and fellow journalists for clues to the thinking of mainstream America. In contrast, Cronkite viewed himself as a working journalist, epitomized by his title of "managing editor," of the CBS Evening News. His credo, adopted from his days as a wire service reporter, was to get the story, "fast, accurate, and unbiased"; his trademark exit line was, "And that's the way it is."

After working at a public relations firm, for newspapers, and in small radio stations throughout the Midwest, in l939 Cronkite joined United Press (UP) to cover World War II. There, as part of what reporters fondly called the "Writing 69th," he went ashore on D-Day, parachuted with the l0lst Airborne, flew bombing mission over Germany, covered the Nuremburg trials, and opened the UP's first post-war Moscow bureau.

Though he had earlier rejected an offer from Edward R. Murrow, Cronkite joined CBS in 1950. First at CBS's Washington affiliate and then over the national network, Cronkite paid his dues to the entertainment side of television, serving as host of the early CBS historical recreation series, "You Are There." He even briefly co-hosted the CBS Morning Show with the puppet Charlemagne. In a more serious vein he narrated the CBS documentary series "Twentieth Century." Earlier, Cronkite had impressed many observers when he anchored CBS's coverage of the l952 presidential nominating conventions.

In April l962, Cronkite took over the anchorman's position from Douglas Edwards on the CBS Evening News. Less than a year later the program was expanded from fifteen to thirty minutes. It was also ironic that Cronkite's first thirty minute newscast included an exclusive interview with President John F. Kennedy. Barely two months later Cronkite was first on the air reporting Kennedy's assassination, and in one of the rare instances when his journalist objectivity deserted him, he shed tears.

Cronkite's rise at CBS was briefly interrupted in l964 when the network, disturbed by the ratings beating CBS News was taking from NBC's Huntley and Brinkley, decided to replace him as anchor at the l964 presidential nominating conventions with the team of Robert Trout and Roger Mudd. Publically accepting the change, but privately disturbed, Cronkite contemplated leaving CBS. However, over ll,000 letters protesting the change undoubtedly helped convince both Cronkite and CBS executives that he should stay on. In l966, Cronkite briefly overtook the Huntley-Brinkley Report in the ratings, and in l967, took the lead. From that time until his retirement, The CBS Evening News was the ratings leader.

Initially, Cronkite was something of a hawk on the Vietnam War, although his program did broadcast controversial segments such as Morley Safer's famous "Zippo lighter" report. However, returning from Vietnam after the Tet offensive Cronkite addressed his massive audience with a different perspective. "It seems now more certain than ever," he said, "that the bloody experience of Vietnam is a stalemate." He then urged the government to open negotiations with the North Vietnamese. Many observers, including presidential aide Bill Moyers, speculated that this was a major factor contributing to President Lyndon B. Johnson's decision to offer to negotiate with the enemy and not to run for President in l968.

A year later Cronkite was one of the foremost boosters of America's technological prowess, anchoring the flight of Apollo XI. Again his vaunted objectivity momentarily left him as he shouted, "Go, Baby, Go," when the mission rocketed into space. For some time Cronkite had seen the space story as one of the most important events of the future, and his coverage of the space shots was as long on information as it was on his famed endurance. In what critics referred to as "Walter to Walter coverage," Cronkite was on the air for 27 of the 30 hours that Apollo XI took to complete its mission.

By the same token, Cronkite never stinted on coverage of the Watergate Scandal and subsequent hearings. In l972, following on the heels of the Washington Post's "Watergate" revelations the CBS Evening News presented a 22 minute, two-part overview of "Watergate" generally credited with keeping the issue alive and making it intelligible to most Americans.

Cronkite could also influence foreign diplomacy, as evidenced in a l977 interview with Eygptian President Anwar El-Sadat, in which he asked Sadat if he would go to Jerusalem to confer with the Israelis. A day after Sadat agreed to such a visit an the invitation came from Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. It was a step that would eventually pave the way for the Camp David accords and an Israeli-Eygptian Peace treaty.

Many criticized him for his refusal to take more risks in TV news coverage. Others felt that his credibility and prestige had greater impact because of his judicious display of those qualities. Similarly, Cronkite was critized because of his preference for short "breaking stories," many of them originating from CBS News' Washington bureau, rather than longer "Enterprisers," which might deal with long range and non-Washington stories. In addition, many felt that Conkite's demand for center stage--an average of six minutes out of the 22 minutes on an evening newscast focused on him--took time away from in-depth coverage of the news. Some referred to this time in the spotlight as "the magic."

In l981, in accord with CBS policy, Cronkite retired. Since then, however, he has hardly been inactive. Indeed, his New Years Eve hosting of PBS's broadcast of the Vienna Philharmonic has become as much a New Years Eve tradition as the dropping of the ball in Times Square. He has also hosted PBS documentaries on health, old age and poor children. In l993 he signed a contract with the Discovery and Learning Channel to do 36 documentaries in three years.

Cronkite's legacy of separating reporting from advocacy has become the norm in television news. In addition, his name has become virtually synonymous with the position of news anchor worldwide--Swedish anchors are known as Kronkiters, and in Holland they are Cronkiters.

Walter Cronkite died in New York on July 17, 2009. He was 92.

Amon, 85, completed her final story for Newsday last week. She died of complications from breast cancer, diagnosed four years earlier.

An unassuming woman with a tireless work ethic, Amon juggled motherhood and career at a time when newsrooms were dominated by men and fought for equal treatment of women at Newsday.

Rising from the pink-collar ghetto of the "women's pages" to become an accomplished feature reporter, Amon interviewed first ladies; wrote about seismic cultural shifts such as feminism and divorce; and shone a light on poverty on Long Island through her coverage of local nonprofits.

"Rhoda wrote with care about matters of supreme importance to our readers," said Newsday editor John Mancini. Praising the "everyday elegance" of her writing, he said, "We will miss her stalwart presence in the newsroom and Long Islanders will miss her unwavering dedication to her craft."

Empathetic but never a pushover, Amon pursued stories with unflappable discipline and fairness. Those who knew her said she was uncowed by the fame of some of her interview subjects, among them 20th century notables such as Rosalynn Carter, Mike Wallace and Rep. Barbara Jordan.

"It was never about the important people, it was always about the ordinary people," said longtime friend Amy Hagedorn of the Hagedorn Foundation, a Port Washington philanthropic group that promotes social equity.

Amon was known among her colleagues as a professional, graceful writer who spent hours on the phone making sure her stories were accurate down to the last detail. "She had a touch," said Harvey Aronson, a former senior Newsday editor. "There is a spark that you can't teach."

She passed her love of reporting on to her grandson, Michael Amon, now a reporter at Newsday.

"She was my inspiration," said Amon, 29, of Woodside, Queens. "Up until the day she died, I was asking her advice on stories. She was very much a fierce defender of her words and the importance of the things she was writing about."

The daughter of a house painter from Lithuania, Amon was born in Newark in 1923 and grew up in Maplewood, N.J. She attended Upsala College in East Orange and New York University, and broke into journalism during World War II as a stringer for Newark Star, writing about soldiers returning home from combat. In 1950 she married Robert Amon, a journalist and maritime historian who also served as a press aide to New York City Mayor Abe Beame. The couple lived in Oceanside and Baldwin before settling with their children, Robert and Amelia, into an airy, hilltop home in Port Washington.

Her husband encouraged her writing, said Amelia Amon, 52, of Manhattan. "My mother and father used to edit each other's work," she said. "I remember them sitting on the couch, just crossing words out and penciling things in. . . . Late at night there would be the tap, tap, tapping of the typewriter."

Amon worked for the Long Island Press for a decade before she was hired at Newsday in 1966, where she wrote about fashion, family and parenting. But she and other female reporters chafed at the limits of their assignments, and the fact that they earned less than their male colleagues.

Their complaints led to a federal discrimination lawsuit that resulted in changes to Newsday's hiring practices. "We all put our jobs on the line, and she was with us every step of the way," said friend Marilyn Goldstein, a former Newsday columnist and reporter.

Amon balanced her love of Long Island with a wanderlust that led to travels across Europe and the Soviet Union - trips she shared with readers of Newsday's travel section. Amon continued traveling after her husband's death in 1992, visiting Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, South Africa and Australia, and wrote a travel column for seniors that ran in hundreds of newspapers. She also taught journalism at Long Island University's C.W. Post campus in Brookville for a number of years.

"She was low-key, never a showoff," said former Newsday editor Howard Schneider. "She just came to work every day for 40 years and did her job. And she made a major contribution to Newsday and to Long Island."

Mulligan died at Danbury Hospital in Danbury, Conn., his brother John Mulligan said. He had been recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, according to his family.

Tom Curley, president of The AP, called Hugh Mulligan "a legendary storyteller. His wit was as penetrating as his humor was revealing. He was a friend and mentor to many at AP around the world. He will be missed immensely."

Insatiably curious and able to find story potential in almost anything, Mulligan roamed the globe, visiting nearly 150 countries from Europe to equatorial Africa to Tibet. He made 28 trips with the pope and covered more than half a dozen wars, including three reporting tours in Vietnam.

In 1970 stories about war's sudden impact on Cambodia, he described a novice army that "rode to war on Pepsi-Cola trucks" and the naive courage of a young soldier who "walked down the road carrying the big red and blue flag, and came home in a body bag."

In Mulligan's words, the riverboat Delta Queen wasn't just plying the Mississippi, she was "spinning rainbows from her stern wheel." The streets of Saigon before the war were "a whisper of bicycles."

Visiting the biblical city of Sodom, he found the modern-day version "without sin," although "one might see a Bedouin three sheets to the wind" in a sandstorm.

"Hugh's beat was mankind," former AP President Louis D. Boccardi said. "He had a love affair with the world, and we of the AP loved him for it. There won't be, there can't be, another Hugh Mulligan."

Born in New York City on March 23, 1925, Hugh Aloysius Mulligan served in World War II as a rifleman in the Army's 106th Infantry Division, after that unit was decimated in the 1944 Battle of the Bulge. After the war he completed a bachelor of arts degree at Vermont's new Marlboro College and was the only member of its first graduating class in 1948, addressed at commencement by poet Robert Frost. He later earned simultaneous degrees — journalism at Boston University and a master's in English literature at Harvard — and taught Greek and Latin at Boston Latin prep school.

Mulligan joined AP in December 1951 in Baton Rouge, La., and after 1956 was based in New York, except for a 1970s stint in London. He retired in 2000.

Having studied early for the priesthood, Mulligan was more than prepared for his favorite assignments — trips with Pope John Paul II. Meeting the pontiff for the first time, he was so nervous that he dropped a bag of rosaries. But the pope blessed them, "even the broken ones," Mulligan wrote later.

Colleagues joked that Mulligan could find a way to mention the Catholic church in any story, no matter the subject. He said the first person he visited in any new place was the local priest, because "they always know what's going on."

In all, Mulligan visited 146 countries on assignments that included wars in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Ireland, Cyprus, Angola and the secessionist Nigerian region of Biafra. He covered President John F. Kennedy's Cold War visit to the Berlin Wall in 1963 and was there again in 1989 when the wall was torn down.

He wrote about space shots and political conventions and was in a blimp overhead when a nuclear submarine flashed its historic message from the North Pole: "Nautilus 90 degrees north."

During the October 1973 war between Israel and Egypt, he was the only American correspondent with Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon's surprise tank counterattack across the Suez Canal.

Among those he interviewed were Marilyn Monroe, Margaret Thatcher, the shah of Iran, John Glenn, Joe DiMaggio — during a baseball game in Rome — and a bevy of writers including Brendan Behan, Tennessee Williams, John Steinbeck and James Jones.

He went to Ireland with presidents Kennedy and Ronald Reagan and to China and Russia with Richard Nixon, toured with jazz great Louis Armstrong and comedian Bob Hope, carried a spear at the Metropolitan Opera and rode a camel caravan in Oman.

He covered the royal wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981 by invitation and her funeral 16 years later. The princess, he wrote, "seems destined ... to enter the elysian fields of eternal celebrity that already enshrines Marilyn, Jackie O and Elvis."

In a quest to report from the planet's most remote datelines, he visited the south Atlantic island of Tristan de Cunha, which claims to be the point on earth farthest from any other land, and finally made it to Antarctica in 2004.

Competing with AP colleagues in New York for choice feature assignments, Mulligan drew the short straw — a weekend in a Pennsylvania nudist colony. "Oh, great," his hostess-to-be said by phone. "You'll be here in time for the square dance." Mulligan later described her as "5-feet-2 in any direction and barefoot all the way up to her harlequin sunglasses" and said the July 4 barbecue was "about the same as any other place except that people tend to stand a little further away from the fire."

Though celebrated most for feature writing, Mulligan was proudest of his war reporting, especially his three years in Vietnam and one in Cambodia. He rode on a helicopter mission to rescue a downed Navy pilot in North Vietnam and was one of three AP staffers covering the last American POW release in Hanoi in March 1973.

Among his favorite Vietnam stories, Mulligan said, was one that consisted of a single paragraph:

"SAIGON (AP) — Rama Dama Rau, Premier Ky's personal astrologist who predicted five years ago that the war would be over in six months, was drafted today."

"That explained more of the war than any other story I wrote," he said later.

In a 2005 interview about his career, Mulligan said he was "most happy that I never became an expert on anything — I never became a space writer, a science writer, a political writer — not being anything allowed you to cover everything."

An intellectual without pretense, Mulligan was a voracious reader and diligent researcher who gloried in finding obscure nuggets of fact and history. His home in Ridgefield, Conn., which he named "Hardscribble House," featured a wall-size bookcase with the works of Irish writers. Despite a lifelong stutter, he also was a brilliant raconteur, delighting audiences with witty observations drawn from his journalistic adventures.

With other AP staffers he co-authored books on the Kennedy assassination and the 1967 Six-Day War, and he wrote his own books on Vietnam, the racehorse Kelso and Sherlock Holmes.

In 2005, he published a memoir, "Been Everywhere, Got Nowhere," drawn in part from a lifelong diary.

Survivors include his wife of 60 years, the former Brigid Murphy, whom he married in her home parish in Armagh, Ireland, in 1948; brothers Andrew, of Las Vegas, and John Mulligan, of Saugerties, N.Y., a former AP reporter and New York City assistant fire commissioner who is a Board member and past President of the New York Press Club; and several nieces and nephews.

She had been in declining health for the last two years, according to former Press Club president, Rich Lamb, who was a friend.

Born June 30th, 1910, in New Boston, Ohio, Edie was an eldest child and survived all but one of her 16 brothers and sisters.

Her journalism career began in 1929 and briefly interrupted her formal education when she left Western College for Women after a summer job on the Cincinnatti Times-Star (later earning an undergraduate and master's degree in American history from the University of Tennessee).

She was a reporter on the Knoxville News Sentinel in the mid 1930's before moving to Manhattan where she found work as a writer for the New York City Housing Authority and as a reporter for The New York Post, the Associated Press and the The World-Telegram and Sun.

Edie joined the New York Times in 1952 and found a home there until her retirement in 1981 though, according to colleagues at the paper, she was known to regularly phone various desks, well into her 90's, to suggest coverage of stories that she felt had been overlooked.

After retirement she continued a prolific stream of articles and stories for the Times and other publications, including the New York Press Club's Byline magazine.

During her Times career, Edie won acclaim and numerous awards for reporting on topics and issues such as urban housing, problems of the elderly, desegregation in the South post-Brown v. Board of Education, interracial adoption and reproductive rights.

A member of the New York Press Club for many years, Edith Asbury was also a regular participant in productions by the Inner Circle, a troupe of New York City reporters who stage an annual satire show for charity.

Lee won numerous professional awards, was a former president of the New York Press Club and was a consultant for the movie "The Paper," in which he had a small part. Tall and immense - "a hulk of a reporter," The New York Times once called him - he was known for his many City Hall contacts and his VIP treatment at disasters.

Lee was on a first-name basis with a long line of fire commissioners and regularly made the rounds of firehouses and firefighters' haunts to schmooze, often in the company of his favorite energy drink, a Heineken.

Don Singleton, a retired rewriteman who often worked with Lee on stories, recalled how a firefighters' strike in November 1973 was short-circuited after Lee disclosed that fire union leaders had authorized an illegal strike. From his vast contacts, Lee had learned the union rank and file actually voted against a strike.

Born in New York City, Lee joined The News in 1955. He retired in 1993.