In June 1978, the Washingtonian magazine ran an article on the “Journalism Establishment” that included a listing of “the top fifty” journalists in the capital. I was included along with a picture, and the article said “The New York Times is still the ‘mark’ for other newspapers in foreign affairs coverage. Gwertzman is regarded by his colleagues as the most influential diplomatic correspondent in town.” I was of course pleased by the recognition, but life goes on and I continued reporting through the Iran crisis, the Camp David Middle East peace agreements, etc.
OnMay 3, 1985, Marie-Jeanne threw me a big 50th birthday party. My family, including my parents in New Rochelle, N.Y., my brother Steve, and all my colleagues were invited with their spouses to our house in Foxhall Village. Afterwards, I had a bit of depression. I was beginning to feel my journalistic career was coming to an end. I figured that at the age of 50+ my days as a reporter were nearing its conclusion. But life is full of surprises. In October 1986, Max Frankel, the former Washington bureau chief who had gone on to New York to lead the magazine and the editorial board, was named the next Executive Editor, to succeed the retiring Abe Rosenthal.
That caused a major realignment at the paper. I was asked to become the next chief White House correspondent, but I turned it down on the grounds that with two years left in his term, Reagan was a “lame duck” and would not be an interesting person to cover. Then, Joe Lelyveld, the former London bureau chief, was named foreign editor by Frankel and Joe asked me to become his deputy. At about the same time, Marie-Jeanne had been suggesting that we look for a bigger house since the boys needed more space. I asked her, in a semi-joking way, whether she would mind looking in the New York area. And she said yes. So I decided to take Joe’s offer, and toward the end of January 1987, I moved to New York. Marie Courtney, the foreign desk administrator, got me a nice rental apartment across the street from Lincoln Center, a short subway ride to Times Square. The rest of the family stayed in Washington for the boys to finish the school year.
I found almost immediately that I loved working on the foreign desk. I loved talking by phone to far-flung correspondents, and to offering them ideas on stories. I got along well with Joe Lelyveld, my boss, who on my first day in the office took me to lunch at Orso’s a great Italian restaurant near the Times building which was then at 229 West 43d street. At the New York Times today in 2017, the paper is in the process of getting rid of separate “desks” for each department, and working from universal desks. There has been a widespread “buyout” of copy editors and a good deal of unhappiness. But back in the 1980s, the foreign desk was a wonderful team with a number of experts versed in foreign affairs. Kevin McKenna and Tom Feyer were the top assistants on the desk when I arrived. It was their job to draw up a list of the stories that we planned to publish the next day and circulate the list around the newsroom. Sam East was the “slot man,” in charge of the actual foreign desk. Then we would choose the stories we thought worthy of front page treatment and send a memo to Frankel and his deputy Arthur Gelb. And around 5:30 pm either me or Joe Lelyveld, or sometimes both of us would go to a special area near Frankel’s office to debate the merits of our front page recommendations with those from other desks.
In preparation for my memoirs, I asked Nancy Kenney, one of our top desk editors, what it was like working at the old foreign desk in the 1980s. She was most complimentary: “I really do marvel now at the welcome I received on my first day. You took me to lunch at Sardi’s. I remember your point out Barbara Walters as she walked past, and introducing me to Clifton Daniel just before we left the restaurant.” She added that “today, copy editors at The Times do not report ot a department head but to a central copy-editing czar, which gives them far less of a sense that they matter to the editors who assign and shape the news. You gave us a sense that we were a team and a fanily whether we were copy editors or in the backfield.” Nancy has recently taken a buy-out from The Times.
I am a New York native, but I had not lived in the area since I went away to college in 1953. So we had to decide where to live and where our two sons, then 13 and 11, would go to school. Jack Rosenthal, a Harvard Crimson colleague and then the NYT editorial board chairman, and Max Frankel, the editor of the Times, both lived or had lived in Riverdale, a section of the Bronx along the Hudson River, with several excellent private schools They both urged me to look into Riverdale. I had hoped we could afford a large apartment in Manhattan, but I quickly found we were priced out. Eventually, we found a house in Riverdale near Manhattan College, and the boys both chose Horace Mann as their school. Marie-Jeanne and I still live in that same house 30 years later.
In 1987, the big story was the eventual arms agreement signed by Milhail Gorbachev and President Reagan eliminating short range missiles ranging from 300 to 3,400 miles, and the dismantling of nuclear warheads. This was the first visit by a Soviet leader since Leonid Brezhnev’s trip in 1973. I accompanied Reagan and our reporters to Moscow in 1988 but nothing was agreed upon, Eventually, in July 2001 Gorbachev and President George H.W. Bush signed the START 1 treaty which was supposed to begin a new era of friendship.
In the summer of 1989, my whole family headed off to France for a month-long vacation. It was interrupted while we were in Dunkirk visiting Marie-Jeanne’s cousin and her family when I received a phone call from Frankel offering me the foreign editor’s job. Joe Lelyveld had been promoted to managing editor. I accepted on the spot. Later in Paris that summer, I offered the deputy foreign editor job to Jim Markham, then the Paris bureau chief. He was hesitant and I found our from him that he was conflicted by a romantic interest he had in Berlin where he had previously been assigned. If he returned to New York, he would be expected to reunite with his family. This tormented him and he eventually committed suicide in Paris. I went with Frankel and Lelyveld to his funeral in New Hampshire. It was a very sobering start to my new career as foreign editor.
