Florrie Schwartzberg, 94

Edited the South Shore Record

Posted

Florence B. “Florrie” Schwartzberg worked in two professions that were once considered for men only, and made a distinct impact with the people she employed.

In a column this week Randi Kreiss remembered her former editor at the South Shore Record. “Florrie Schwartzberg was a woman blessed with an eye for composition and an ear for the music of words. She made an incomparable contribution to the world of community newspapers.”

Schwartzberg, who along with her husband, Jerry, owned the South Shore Record, died at her home in Rockville Centre on March 1. She was 94. Jerry predeceased her in 2010.

The daughter of Dora and Benjamin Barondess, Schwartzberg graduated from Lawrence High School and Hofstra University. Her first career was advertising and she wrote copy for Grey Advertising and a few other agencies.

She and Jerry, both lifelong Five Towns residents, were married in 1944. For 35 years, Schwartzberg edited copy for the award-winning community weekly newspaper that at one time was considered the largest by circulation in New York State. Its coverage included the Five Towns and surrounding communities such as Atlantic Beach and North Woodmere.

“I worked for Florrie, I wrote the restaurant column, I thought she was dynamite,” said Joyce Goodman. “I couldn’t have picked a better employer. I didn’t know if I could work for a woman. But she was fair and had a sense of humor.”

Kreiss noted that a majority of the staff were women from the writers to the sales people. “She was very brilliant, an unusually bright woman,” said Bebe Orzac, who wrote the travel column “Conversations on Safari” for a number of years.

Eileen Walsh, who also worked for Schwartzberg, remembers the editor continuing to write using a red-colored IBM typewriter even as computers became mainstays in the newsroom. “I remember Florrie as woman who loved writing, loved her South Shore Record and made everyone who worked for her feel as though they were part of ‘her’ family,” said Walsh, now a Richner Communications, Inc. employee, the company that publishes the Herald.

Schwartzberg is survived by her children, Daniel, John (Linda), and Jane, grandchildren Elisabeth and Alexander, her brother Jeremiah, and beloved nephews and nieces.

A funeral service was held at Boulevard-Riverside-Hewlett Chapel on March 4.