Mel Opotowsky, an exacting Newsday editor, dies at 92
Mel Opotowsky, shown at his desk at Newsday in 1972, was known as a tough, aggressive editor. Credit: Opotowsky Family
Long before Mel Opotowsky made a name for himself as an editor at Newsday, he had learned his actual first name was nothing like the one the newsroom knew him by.
His mother was too sick to provide hospital staff with a name after he was born on Dec. 13, 1931, so her relatives stepped in, is how the family story goes.
“One of her in-laws submitted a name for the birth certificate and named him Maurice Leon after their father and she was furious,” said Opotowsky's son, Didier Opotowsky, of Hagerstown, Maryland.
“My grandmother didn't like the name Maurice Leon, which was his legal name, so she called him Mel. He didn't find this out until 18 years later when he got his draft papers.”
Mel Opotowsky, a former St. James resident and a Newsday editor from the early 1960s to the early 1970s, died April 18 of a heart attack. He was 92.
Born in New Orleans, he graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1953 with a bachelor of arts degree in history. After being drafted into the Army in 1954, Opotowsky was stationed in Kansas City, where he started filing dispatches for United Press International. He was honorably discharged two years later.
Opotowsky and his brother, Stan, relocated to Mississippi where they owned and operated the Sea Coast Echo weekly newspaper. The brothers sold the paper in 1955 and moved back to New York, where Opotowsky married Madelaine Duhamel, after the two met as neighbors in Greenwich Village. Duhamel died in 1991.
“She was an outstanding cook and he really enjoyed her food," Didier Opotowsky said. "He felt bad that all he did was take her leftovers, so he took her out on dates and their relationship culminated in marriage in February of 1959.”
The couple moved to St. James in 1965 and to California in 1973. In addition to their son, they had two daughters, Joelle and Arielle, who died in 1968. Mel Opotowsky and his wife separated in 1986 and eventually divorced. He married his second wife, Bonnie, in May 1991, when they reconnected after dating in high school.
“I will always remember how generous he was and how much he cared about us. He was a great dad,” said Joelle Opotowsky, of La Verne, California. “In the past 10 years, it was all about being a granddad. He was patient, the calmest of the family, and he had such a good way with all the grandkids.”
In 1962, Opotowsky joined Newsday as the Suffolk County editor. According to his son, Opotowsky was known for his “attention to detail, strict adherence to journalistic ethics, and sharp wit.”
“He looked for ways to poke holes in your stories and was always searching for the best factual information,” said Didier Opotowsky of his father's editing prowess. “He was a very tough, aggressive editor. You wouldn't want him as your editor.”
Paul Schreiber, a longtime Newsday reporter and editor, and a co-founder of the journalism school at Stony Brook University, worked with Opotowsky in 1968 and remembered him as “the scariest, toughest editor a new reporter at Newsday could have.”
“He pushed hard on every assignment, and it was rarely easy satisfying his journalistic demands, but the experience was golden, though it took me a while to realize,” Schreiber said. “Mel’s journalistic influence was part of me throughout my career.”
In 1973, Opotowsky left Newsday and moved to Riverside, California, becoming an editor at the Riverside Press-Enterprise. He retired in 1999 as managing editor and went on to teach part time at Cal State Fullerton University before ending his teaching tenure because of Parkinson's disease.
In addition to his two children and his wife, Opotowsky is survived by the couple's grandchildren. A memorial service and celebration of life will be held May 18 at Claremont Manor Hall in Claremont, California.
