Remembering Gabe Pressman: Highlights of His Memorial Service Tuesday
The New York City legend passed last Friday at age 93
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A few tears, a few hearty laughs and a lot of memories were shared as friends and family remembered Gabe Pressman at 30 Rock. Though he knew and covered the famous, he worked, he said, for the people. David Ushery has more highlights from his memorial Tuesday.
In celebration of a journalistic icon and in honor of his lasting contributions to the city he loved, NBC 4 New York hosted a special memorial service for Gabe Pressman on Tuesday.
Pressman, a New York icon and pioneering reporter whose local broadcast career spanned more than six decades, died Friday at the age of 93.
A Who's Who of New York public life past and present remembered Pressman, from Cardinal Timothy Dolan (who read from the Book of Psalms) and former Rep. Charlie Rangel, to NBC legend Tom Brokaw and former police commissioners Ray Kelly and Bill Bratton.
"For me, Gabe was the foundation of what reporting is about," said Brokaw, who anchored the NBC Nightly News for more than two decades.
The two-hour ceremony also featured heartfelt remembrances by his wife Vera, sons Mark and Michael and daughter Liz.
Liz Pressman, a news librarian at the New York Post and the only one of his children to follow their father into the news business, recalled their shared love of news as the thing that united them, even in the toughest of times.
"What's the wood?" her father would call her and ask, she said. (The front page of New York tabloids is often called "the wood" in the business.)
Credited with being the first television reporter in New York, Pressman called NBC 4 New York home for more than half a century. He is survived by his wife, four children, eight grandchildren and his great grandson.
Chuck Scarborough Remembers Gabe Pressman
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In Pictures: His Life and Iconic Career
NBC 4 NY
Growing up in the Bronx, Gabe Pressman started a newspaper for his family at 8 or 9 years old, with headlines like "Cousin Teddy's First Tooth" and "Grandma's Spongecake Made With Real Sponges."
NBC 4 NY
Gabe Pressman grew up in the Bronx; he would later profile his home borough, tracking its evolution over his lifetime.
Gabe Pressman
Gabe Pressman was a combat naval officer in WWII and fought in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. Pressman, who was 20 years old at the time, called it "the most dramatic moment of World War II."
Gabe Pressman
Gabe Pressman, seen here in the Bronx with his mother, Lena Pressman, in 1943. At the time he was a 19-year-old apprentice seaman for the U.S. Navy.
NBC/NBC NewsWire
After the war, Pressman graduated from the Columbia School of Journalism in 1947. Pressman, pictured here at NBC News in New York City on April 2, 1956, is credited with being the first television reporter in New York.
NBC/NBC NewsWire
He covered major stories including the sinking of the Andrea Doria and the Weinberger kidnapping on Long Island. In this file photo, NBC News' Pressman during a Chase Manhattan Bank sponsored newsreel on October 15, 1958 .
Gabe Pressman, at left, recalled of interviewing Marilyn Monroe in New York, "She was effervescent. She was beautiful and she transfixed the reporters who interviewed her. I was one of them." He recalls his interview with her here.
NBC 4 NY
Gabe Pressman recalled visiting Martin Luther King Jr.'s hospital room early in his career, just after King had been stabbed by a woman after a book signing in Harlem: "What an honor to have met this man. I look back at my long career in the business of journalism and consider myself so fortunate to have exchanged just a few words with Dr. King a half century ago."
NBC 4 NY
Gabe Pressman covered the plane crash over Park Slope, Brooklyn, in 1960. He would later write, "In those early days of my career, I always struggled to maintain an indifference to the tragedies I covered. I thought it was important to be objective all all times. But the news that Stephen [an 11-year-old boy who had been blown out of the plane] had died shattered me."
NBC 4 NY
Gabe Pressman at JFK Airport when the Beatles arrived in the U.S. for the first time in February 1964.
NBC News/NBCU Photo Bank
Gabe Pressman, third from left, anchors WNBC' "Sixth Hour News" in 1971 with colleagues, (L-R) Kyle Rote, Norma Quarles, Pressman and Sander Vanocur.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this Nov. 8, 1977, file photo, Gabe Pressman moderates a televised New York mayoral debate. From left: Edward Koch, the Democratic candidate, Barry Farber, running as a Conservative, moderator Gabe Pressman, Cuomo, running as a Liberal, and Republican candidate Roy Goodman.
Gabe Pressman, second from left, was covering a tugboat accident in Long Island Sound when President John F. Kennedy was shot. Pressman said he rushed back to Midtown Manhattan with the news crew and parked on 49th Street. Crowds gathered around their car to listen to news of the presidents assassination on the radio.
NBC News/NBCU Photo Bank
Gabe Pressman anchors WNBC' "Sixth Hour" in 1971.
Associated Press
First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, fields questions from WNBC television reporter Gabe Pressman, left, concerning her position on the FALN clemency issue, in front of the Virgil I. Grissom Junior High School 226, in the Queens borough of New York, Thursday, Sept. 9, 1999.
Getty Images
Vera Pressman and Gabe Pressman pose at Sony Pictures Classic's screening of "The Lives of Others" at the Sony Screening Room on February 1, 2007 in New York City.
Patrick McMullan via Getty Images
(L-R) Vera Pressman, Gabe Pressman and Senator Barack Obama attend Conversations on the Circle with then Senator Barack Obama And Dick Parsons at Time Warner Headquarters on July 24, 2007 in New York City.
NBC 4 New York
Pressman has covered over a dozen presidential elections. In this Oct. 17, 2012, file photo, Pressman is in Daytona Beach, to take a look at the Florida electorate and examines how political divisions run deep in families.
NBC 4 New York
Gabe Pressman has covered the St. Patrick's Day Parade every year for over 60 years, always speaking with the politicians and the people. Here he is covering the parade just this past March.
NBC 4 NY
Gabe Pressman loved going into the neighborhoods and talking to the people; that would manifest in his series of neighborhood profiles of New York City. They included Astoria, Alphabet City, Boerum Hill, Richmond Hill, St. George, Sunset Park, Crown Heights, Forest Hills, Bayside, Port Morris, Little Italy, Jackson Heights, Greenpoint, Koreatown and so many more.
Gabe Pressman/Facebook
Gabe Pressman interviewed Eli Wiesel several times. He reflected on his Facebook page on Holocaust Memorial Day back in April that Wiesel "had the air of an Old Testament prophet. And I felt his warmth, his concern for my welfare, maybe because he remembered his own journalistic career, which began some years after he came out of death camps. Whatever it was, we had a chemistry."
Broadcasting icon Gabe Pressman produced a series exploring the diverse neighborhoods of his beloved New York City. Here's a collection of those stories.
Gabe Pressman Recalls Childhood in the Bronx
NBC 4 New York senior correspondent Gabe Pressman talks about the neighborhood he grew up in the Bronx.
Remembering 'Freedom Summer'
WNBC Senior Correspondent Gabe Pressman remembers Freedom Summer, when America was shaken by civil rights abuses in the South.
Remembering Woodstock
In the summer of 1969, hundreds of thousands of young people gathered in a cow pasture in Bethel for a rock festival known as Woodstock. Our senior correspondent Gabe Pressman was there. And this year, on the festival’s 45th anniversary, we take a look back at the legendary event.
