I passionately love good reporters. They are the best poets around. Here in the middle of “Be Condescending to a Poet Month“, all hail Murray Illson.
April 8, 2004
Murray Illson, 91, a Times Reporter Who Gave a Deft Touch to the Mundane, Dies
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Murray Illson, a retired reporter for The New York Times who covered police news, education and a variety of general New York City topics, often with a wry inflection, died on Tuesday at a retirement community in Louisville, Colo. He was 91.
His death was reported by his son John, of Boulder, Colo.
Mr. Illson was born in New York on March 30, 1913, and attended public schools. He came to The Times as a New York University correspondent in the 1930’s, working for the sports department and the city desk. He graduated from N.Y.U. in 1938 with a bachelor’s degree in art education and was named to the reporting staff in 1940. He retired in 1978.
During World War II, he served in the Army as a rifleman in Europe and was awarded a Bronze Star.
As a reporter, Mr. Illson often applied a deft touch to the mundane. Asked to write an explanation to readers for an error in a March 1967 crossword-puzzle clue about leap year, he wrote a four-paragraph disquisition on the Julian calendar, remarked on subsequent adjustments made by Pope Gregory XIII and ended with the following:
“The next year that will be a leap year is 1968; the next centesimal leap year will be 2000. Mrs. Margaret Farrar, who has been editing the crossword puzzles in The New York Times since 1942, said yesterday that she would keep all this in mind.”
After a wounded bank robber fled the police on Aug. 6, 1971, Mr. Illson wrote:
“After holding up a Bronx bank, a robber was shot in the leg by a detective yesterday but managed to escape in a crowded city bus. He did not have the required exact fare, but he did have two guns.”
Mr. Illson’s wife, the former Dorothy Spence, died in 1990. Besides his son John, he is survived by his sons Richard, of Rocky River, Ohio, and James, of Seattle; a sister, Madeline Rosenberg of Hartsdale, N.Y.; and two brothers, Edmund, of San Diego, and Robert, of Sun City West, Ariz.