Budding journalist
Posted for: PETER B BUSHEY:
Pete Bushey was a proud graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism. We worked together, sort of, at The Herald Stateman, no longer the daily newspaper for Yonkers, New York. I believe he was serving an internship in the editorial department there while I was a part-time/summertime darkroom technican in what was then called the photo comp department. We also were both from South Yonkers and would wind up on the same side in touch football games at Pelton Field; I was pretty awful, he was quite good. However, I do remember the play on which we scored a touchdown together. He was invariable the quarterback. I went out for a pass, a down and out. Chickie Mazzucca (sp?) knocked the ball down. Now it was fourth down, and this would be the last play of this pickup game for twilight was turning into night. In the huddle I told Pete that if I run the same play but turned in, it would work. He agreed. I felt so excited that he agreed. The play worked. Chickie still knocked the ball out of my hands, but I had held it a few seconds so it was declared a valid score. That's the last time I can remember being with Pete. We probably passed each other on Lawrence Street or Van Cortlandt Park Avenue near Cena's sometime after that, but I don't remember those chance meetings.

Peter was tall, almost silent. A quiet leader was being formed within Peter Bushey. His hair was blond and also very short, not a crew cut, just short. We spoke about journalism occasionally; I could sense his life's ambition was to be deeply involved in the newspaper business. We were not close friends, but I remember so vividly.

As fate would have it I came to work at Columbia University for many years. Following an ugly episode on campus when an adjunct faculty member wished the worse for American troops in the Middle East, Pete's memory came back to me far more often. I looked up his alumni record at Columbia.
In his one living year as a bona fide alumnus he made a gift. That struck me; for he surely did not have very much by the way of financial resources at the time and made the gift to the J-School's annual fund just the same. Columbia had his date of death wrong, so I had it corrected as well as having where he died noted. I think Pete would have wanted it that way. Now his record is accurate the way a good journalist would want it.

Posted by: Tom Gray
Email: tg5@columbia.edu
Relationship: From the neighborhood
Friday, April 29, 2005
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