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After purchasing their Bay Street home in the North Sea Beach Colony nearly 50 years ago, Richard Petrow, a former reporter, editor and longtime journalism professor at New York University, spent every summer in the Hamptons with his family.The family’s annual pilgrimage to the East End was a welcome break from city life, and something that Mr. Petrow always looked forward to after a semester of educating the next generation of journalists, according to his relatives.
“He and I would go clamming and musseling, and loved going to the beach together,” Mr. Petrow’s daughter, Julie Petrow-Cohen, 55, of Maplewood, New Jersey, said this week. “We loved jogging through the neighborhood and going for walks—enjoying the beauty of the Southampton area.”
On April 11, Richard Petrow died in the Manhattan apartment that he once shared with his late wife, Margot, who died in January. He was 87.
“Apparently, he couldn’t live without her,” said Steven Petrow of Hillsborough, North Carolina, one of Mr. Petrow’s two sons.
The family’s summer home in North Sea was once owned by Shirley Robinson, a descendant of Walter Rogers Burling, who started a number of Long Island newspapers in the 1800s, including The Southampton Press. In fact, Ms. Robinson and her husband, William Read Robinson, were publishers of the weekly newspaper until the 1970s.
At one point, Mr. Petrow himself worked as a reporter for The Press—and he remained a fan of the paper.
“He loved the print edition of The Southampton Press,” the 59-year-old Mr. Petrow said of his father on Friday. “I was always delighted to see it at the house when I visited.”
Richard Petrow was born in Brooklyn on May 26, 1929, to Kozma Petrow, a Ukrainian immigrant, and Marian Petrow, who grew up in Massachusetts. Steven Petrow noted that his grandmother was a librarian, a career choice that, he said, most likely fueled his father’s passion for writing, reporting and, later, teaching.
Richard Petrow also worked at Newsday and was employed as both a writer and editor for The New York News. Additionally, he was a writer and producer for CBS Radio Network, a television news producer for WNET and WNBC, and later went on to work on a number of PBS documentaries.
“When [John F. Kennedy] was shot in ’63, I came home and my father was dispatched to Texas to cover the assassination,” Steven Petrow recalled this week. “He had a real passion for that, and for teaching.”
Mr. Petrow started teaching at New York University in 1971, serving as the school’s Journalism Department chair three times over that span—and later establishing a graduate program for journalism—prior to retiring in 2002.
Many of his former colleagues turned to the internet after learning about his death, and posted memories of Mr. Petrow on NYU’s website.
One of those colleagues was NYU Associate Professor of Journalism and Social and Cultural Analysis David Dent. In one post, Mr. Dent described Mr. Petrow as “an amazing man with a kind heart” and as someone who possessed “an unyielding faith in the power of good journalism to change society.”
“When they invented the word ‘stalwart,’ the gods of language surely had Dick Petrow in mind,” former White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers posted on the same memorial page. “He was a resolute and loyal colleague, a true professional in the editing room, and a fun-loving companion when the show was over.”
As his mother was to him, Richard Petrow had a strong influence on his three children. Steven Petrow is employed as a columnist for The Washington Post, Jay Petrow, 57, who lives in Westport, Connecticut, is a former art director for Business Week who now owns his own landscaping business, and Ms. Petrow-Cohen is an attorney.
“He taught me how to write well,” Ms. Petrow-Cohen said. “He would review my papers when I was younger and really taught me how to write well. That was part of me becoming a lawyer. That was a real skill set that I learned from him.”
Her late father also authored three books: “The Bitter Years,” in 1974; “The Black Tide: In the Wake of Torrey Canyon,” in 1968; and “Across the Top of Russia,” in 1965. “The Bitter Years” focused on the Nazi invasion and occupation of Denmark and Norway during World War II, while “The Black Tide: In the Wake of Torrey Canyon” focused on the extensive environmental damage done after a supertanker, the SS Torrey Canyon, ran aground off the southern coast of England in 1967, releasing tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the ocean. The oil tanker had a cargo capacity of 120,000 tons and, at the time, was the largest such vessel ever to be wrecked.
His first book, “Across the Top of Russia,” recounted the time he went on a scientific expedition into the Arctic Sea in 1965 aboard a U.S. Coast Guard cutter.
“When he came back from that, he came to my class and showed slides of polar bears walking around the Arctic,” Steven Petrow said. “All of a sudden, I had the coolest dad.”
Following his retirement from NYU, Mr. Petrow had the time to get more involved in the East End community, serving on the Board of Trustees of the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton Village.
“Their home base may have been New York City, but their heart was always in Southampton,” Ms. Petrow-Cohen said of her late parents.
In addition to his children, Mr. Petrow is survived by his four grandchildren, William, Anna, Jessie and Caroline.
Relatives will hold a private burial at Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor at a later date. A memorial service will be held in New York City in June though an exact date and location had not been decided on as of earlier this week.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the New York University Journalism Department, “In Memory of Richard Petrow; c/o Cynthia Young,” and mailed to UDAR, New York University, 25 West 4th Street, Third Floor, New York, NY 10012.
Greg Wehner on Apr 24, 2017