Veteran Journalist Recalls His Trailblazing Mom

Sandra Newser Waldman (born 1932, died this week)–When mom woke up from surgery for lung cancer a decade ago, she opened her eyes, saw us standing there and asked, “Did you eat?”

Facing her own struggle, her first instinct was to feed us. She performed all the maternal tasks that I didn’t appreciate at the time—creating the byzantine schedule for the carpool; serving as a den mother for the Cub Scouts; and volunteering for years with the PTA. Later in life, she was embarrassed by her cooking, but my memories are only fond of the meatloaf with a thick layer of ketchup on top, shake-and-bake chicken, and Jell-O molds that she put on the table after a day of work.

When consoling or encouraging, she would put her hands softly on both of my cheeks. There hasn’t been a day in my life that I didn’t feel loved by her. She was my professional role model. Although she described herself as shy until her final days, she became a journalist when it was daunting for a woman.

She was one of a handful of women in the class of 1955 at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When the newsmagazines and other prestige outlets came around to recruit, they didn’t bother interviewing the female students. But she got a break when the Beauty Editor at the Associated Press in Boston went on maternity leave. In 1956, she joined CBS Radio, and became producer for an up-and-comer named Walter Cronkite in their show “Answer Please,” which responded to reader questions about current events. Snail mail AMA.

She had stopped being a regular journalist by the time I was conscious but continued to copy-edit menus during restaurant meals until she was old. Columbia Journalism Review came to our home, and I thought being a journalist was the most worthwhile job possible. Mid-career she teamed up with my father to create their own public relations firm. Her favorite assignment was editing The 340 Leader, the newspaper of a local union. As a child, I liked watching her use rubber cement to paste down the copy into a five-column grid. Probably her most important professional accomplishment came in the 1980s when she joined the Population Council. There, she helped lead the comms strategy for the FDA approval of Mifepristone. She barely talked about her career, and would be embarrassed by my recounting. If pressed, she would say (perhaps appropriately) that her greatest piece of writing was the family Haggadah that she produced each year for the past five decades. It mixed ancient texts, modern poems, Anne Frank excerpts, family milestones, and her own political commentary. Her humility ran deep, as did her kindness. I recently was thumbing through her high school yearbook, full of quotes like, “You’re one of the nicest people I’ve met.” It struck me because at her assisted living facility, elderly women regularly came up to me, touched my sleeve, and whispered, “Your mom is the nicest woman in the world.” I would nod and say, “I know. I know.”

Steven Waldman is an American journalist. He is currently president and co-founder of Report for America, a national service program that deploys emerging journalists to local newsrooms.