Walter Weglein's Obituary
Walter Weglein, a German Jewish refugee, who served as reporter and editor for the Paterson Evening News before becoming a corporate pubic relations manager and later public relations director for the New Jersey chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, died peacefully on December 20th, 2018 in his home in Pompton Plains. He was 88 years old.
Walter J. Weglein was born in Nuremberg on June 2, 1930 to Else (Freimann) Weglein and Leo Weglein, a prosperous executive for a leather goods business. The family narrowly escaped from Nazi Germany in December of 1939. Walter and his parents were resettled by a Jewish aid organization to Youngstown, Ohio in 1940. He learned English by reading the local newspaper, the Youngstown Vindicator, and this sparked his lifelong ardor for journalism and provided an opportunity to feed his insatiable need to gather information by asking the standard reportorial questions of “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” and “why.”
Walter graduated from high school in 1949, and worked briefly in a steel mill to earn enough money to move to New York City to pursue a career as a professional journalist. He found work as a copy boy at the then-liberal New York Post and later was an assistant to the syndicated columnist Earl Wilson. Walter moved to Texas in 1952 to work as a correspondent for the Beaumont Journal and returned to New York the following year to take a job at the Paterson Evening News working initially as courthouse reporter and rising to the position of suburban editor. He married Phyllis Jacobs, had two children – a son, David, and a daughter, Jessica – and with his young family moved to Radburn, Fair Lawn. During his over 50 years as a resident of Fair Lawn, Walter was deeply engaged in the civic life of the community, became a regular and outspoken attendee of community meetings, and, with his wife Phyllis, was an energetic advocate for and benefactor of the Fair Lawn Public Library.
In 1969, he left the Paterson News for a position as Publication’s Editor at American Cyanamid in Wayne, New Jersey and than as public relations manager at Warner-Lambert in Morris Plains. Upon retirement from Warner-Lambert in 1991, Walter soon after joined the Institute for Retired Professionals at the New School in New York City. A self-described “student of life” and omnivorous autodidact, his time at the NS gave him the opportunity both as student and instructor to pursue his wide-ranging interests with the same enthusiasm he brought to his career. It was a memoir-writing class that initiated a long period of reflection on his childhood in Germany and his traumatic flight and resettlement in the United States and this found expression in a series of essays and short stories that would preoccupy him until the end of his life.
He was living in the Cedar Crest retirement community at the time of his death where he moved following the death of his wife Phyllis in 2014. Their union lasted for over 60 years. He is survived by his son David (Stacey Mann Weglein), his daughter Jessica Kraus (Ben Kraus) and his granddaughter Sheena. A gathering to celebrate his life will take place on Sunday, February 3rd at 12 p.m. in the Village Square Music Room at Cedar Crest, 1 Cedar Crest Drive, Pompton Plains.
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