Michelle Krach, longtime Newsday employee, dies at 60

During her nearly 40 years at Newsday, Michelle Krach was the kind of person you could count on to get things done and to do it with a smile. From a part-time job while in college to becoming director of print ad operations, she continually impressed colleagues who became friends — and one who became more.

“I worked in a department that, in the flow of things, was right before hers,” recalled her husband, Steve Krach, now the newspaper’s prepress operations manager. “The departments worked closely together, so that's how we met” in the mid-1980s.

They began dating and when he was ready to propose, he said he sold his Corvette and motorcycle to buy an engagement ring. “My friends at Newsday, they'd kid me: ‘Hey, Steve, how's your Corvette? I saw it this morning on Michelle's finger!’ " he recalled. "I'd be, like, ‘Y’know what? It was a good trade!' ”

Retired colleague James Kober, of Dix Hills, to whom Michelle Krach reported for many years, called her “the voice of reason. She was always the adult in the room. She was my sounding board."

She was generous with her time, always willing to teach people who would seek her help with computers and other issues, he said. “Instead of just taking the easy way out and saying, ‘I'll do it for you,’ she would say, ‘Let me show you how to do it.’ "

In late 2021, Krach took medical leave upon being diagnosed with glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer. “The tumor was located in my left occipital lobe,” she wrote in an essay the following year. “I had a craniotomy (literally brain surgery) to remove an apricot-sized tumor.”

She completed radiation treatment on Jan. 13, 2022, and began chemotherapy. But though she “fought this battle with dignity and grace every day for three-plus years,” said her husband, Krach died at her Deer Park home on Dec. 28, eight days shy of her 61st birthday.

Dedicated to her family and work

Krach was born Michelle Stacy Ehrenfreund on Jan. 5, 1964, in the Bronx. She was one of two children of Irwin Ehrenfreund, a union electrician, and Selma Gold Ehrenfreund, who taught Hebrew school. The family lived in the Queens complex Electchester, a 38-building subsidized housing co-op for electricians and their families, before moving to Deer Park. When her parents retired to Florida in the early 1990s, Michelle and Steve Krach, who married on March 10, 1991, bought the family home.

Krach graduated from Half Hollow Hills High School East in 1982, and went on to earn a business degree in 1986 from Hofstra University. 

During college, she worked part time at Newsday, where she started out as a paper measurer, ensuring all ad space was accounted for, her husband said.

Her positions as she rose up the ranks included prepress production coordinator, production coordinator, ad traffic/order-entry supervisor, manager of ad support operations and finally director of print ad operations.

“She worked so hard," said her colleague and close friend, Newsday prepress/digital output manager Tom Schiavone, of Ronkonkoma. “I’d see emails from her at midnight, 1 in the morning. I go, ‘What are you doing?’ She goes, ‘Oh, I was up folding laundry, so I figured I'd answer a couple of emails.' "

As a mother of two, she was amused and delighted to attend parent-teacher nights in the same classrooms where she had attended school. “She was always there for the kids — not just ours, all the kids in the classroom — always putting things together,” said her husband. “I can’t think of anything she couldn’t do.”

That included in the workplace: She learned American Sign Language in order to sign for deaf employees, and would volunteer to sign at meetings and presentations. “I don't think she was certified in it,” said her husband. “She learned it on her own from deaf people in the composing room who helped her.”

Krach ran multiple times in a memorial 5k race that raised money for a scholarship fund in honor of Raymond M. Downey, an FDNY deputy chief from Deer Park who was killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Her husband said she also adopted five rescue dogs, and volunteered with East Patchogue’s New York Bully Crew, which specializes in pit bull rescues. 

One of her final joys was attending the wedding of her daughter, Rachel.

“My daughter and now son-in-law were supposed to get married in 2025, but because of Michelle's sickness, they moved it up,” Steve Krach said. “They got married in July 2024, and Michelle was there and able to enjoy it.”

In addition to her husband and their daughter, who lives in Holbrook, Krach is also survived by the couple’s son, Austin, of Deer Park; her parents; and her brother, Bryan, of Arizona.

A service was held Thursday at I. J. Morris Funeral Home in Dix Hills, with burial immediately following at Wellwood Beth Moses Cemetery in West Babylon. Mourners are asked to send donations to the American Brain Tumor Association.