Bernard Gavzer

NEW YORK (AP) - The family of Bernard Gavzer, a former Associated Press features writer and Emmy award-winning TV producer who died Monday at age 90, plans to donate the late journalist's notebooks and papers to the AP's archives, Annemarie Colbin, the late newsman's wife, said Wednesday.

Gavzer worked for the AP in the 1960s and '70s. He then went on to become a producer for WNBC News 4 New York. He worked with anchor Chuck Scarborough on several Emmy-award winning projects. Gavzer also was a columnist for Parade Magazine.

"He was a consummate reporter," Colbin said. "He had an under-stated style that encouraged his subjects to let their guard down and speak freely," she said.

His in-depth stories over the years covered the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald and Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as topics ranging from medical marijuana to the trucking industry.

Gavzer was born in Chicago and served as a private in the U.S. Army in World War II, Colbin said. After the war, he joined the AP in Chicago in an entry-level position, she said.

"Little by little he worked his way up by doing reporting," she added.

Gavzer died at his home in New York City of neck cancer, Colbin said.

She said Gavzer donated his brain to New York University's Aging and Dementia Center, where he was part of a longtime study. His family is planning a memorial.

He is survived by his wife; three children; three grandchildren and two stepdaughters.


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