DAVID E. PITT

I’m thinking of David now in May, 2021, as the Brandeis Class of 1971 prepares to celebrate a 50th anniversary. David became Editor of the campus newspaper, the Justice, in 1968, a year of uproar in many spheres, and we were great allies & partners in prose. We stayed in touch; I also developed Parkinson’s, as he did;& I mourned his loss. A favorite memory: he passed along tickets to an uproarious concert of political music hosted by Sheldon Harnick at the 92nd St Y! David, Joe & I remember...

I knew David in the Berkshires were he did news on WGRG -- an unusual radio station -- where I also worked. Some years later at a NYT gathering David had moved to NYT and then to UNICEF where he wrote speeches for Carol Bellamy. I had just moved to NYC where my wife Kathy became part of the NYT foreign desk. At the party I casually asked David if there was any work to be had in UN precincts. One thing led to another and soon I was in the same communications wing of UNICEF as David was, within...

Happy trails, Cowboy.
Love always,
Wanda & Joe Pitt

I had the great honour to meet David when he was working in UNICEF. He was a wonderful colleague, I enjoyed our numerous conversations covering a myriad of topics from his work at the Times, fencing (which was completely alien to me!) music, his two children and life in NY. Sincere condolences to his family.

David was truly the courageous one, fighting an insidious disease which robbed him of his strength but not his continually positive belief that he would be strong again. He never complained and always answered, with his wonderful smile, that he was "fine."

We had opening day at Fenway without you, dear friend, but the Sox are doing what they always do, as you used to say, breaking your heart. This year will be better, but the season without you breaks all of our hearts.

Many fond memories of David from the twenties--our youth, not the decade, flood back.

My deepest sympathy to Jamie & Kate and love to Martha for being a person of great courage.

David was my teacher at Columbia J School; he later became my friend, and most recently, a neighbor. I still think of him as my (only) hip teacher at the J School: the cowboy boots turned the three-piece suit into a statement that he was confident enough to play in the big leagues but he wasn't going to let anyone own him. This is the essence of being a journalist. But few of us can maintain that stance now, and even fewer manage to be so dapper as they do it. It's hard not to see the loss of...

I was so sorry to learn of David's death. We worked together at the foreign desk of The New York Times in the 1980s. He was a smart journalist and a good man. I will miss him.

I just learned of David's death today at a lunch of the Silurians, an organization he persuaded me to join six or seven years ago. He was my cherished right hand man in the mid- 1980s when I was the foreign editor of The New York Times, and we both shared the meaningful experience of having worked for the old New York Post and The Times. It was a time when newsrooms were sheer joy because of people with the wit and moxie of David Pitt who inhabited them. It was also a time when David had a...