Gerald "Jerry" Eskenazi

I chose CCNY because of finances - it was essentially free. I qualified because of my grades. That was really the major reason. It was an easy A-train ride for me. I was a literature major, so the courses I took there and also my time spent in the school newspaper stood out for me. CCNY had two competing newspapers and each came out twice a week. Like a lot of other guys, I spent too much time in the newspaper office. It was a combination of studying literature and the newspaper. It's hard for me to separate the two at this point. Eventually, I became the editor. The paper, The Observation Post, had been formed right after World War II by Army veterans. In May 1959, I went to The New York Times to apply for a job. I had seen an ad in the paper for a copy boy. The Times had two openings: one in news and one in sports, each paying $38 a week. Writing news was really my forte. However, I thought I would make a quicker entrance into the upper echelons as a sportswriter. I took what I thought would be a temporary job in sports and stayed there for 44 years. I wound up with the second-highest number of bylines in the history of the newspaper, with about 8,000. I also wrote 16 books while I was there. I had a really interesting career at The New York Times, often involving my wife and three children. I went to four Olympics and about 22 Super Bowls. I was, at various times, the hockey writer, the TV sports columnist, the pro football writer, the boxing writer, and the auto-racing writer. It was a ball. I had a wonderful career.