Barbara Bedell, community columnist at Times Herald-Record for 46 years, dies at age 87
For decades, she was a fixture at Orange County events and in the pages of the Times Herald-Record, toting notebook and camera to picnics and parades to chronicle the people and activities of the community she loved.
Barbara Bedell, a longtime columnist who worked at the Record for 46 years and who was woven into the newspaper's grain until her retirement in 2019, died Thursday morning at age 87 at Garnet Health Medical Center in the town of Wallkill. She lived in the hamlet of Walker Valley and had been admitted to the hospital last week.
Her column used to run every day, including weekends. Seven days a week, Bedell filled her page of the tabloid-shaped newspaper with bright accounts of events she attended, bulletins about others on the horizon, and all types of other news about the people and organizations that make up a community.
Political blowups, crime and crashes came and went on the front pages each day. Further inside, Bedell supplied a steady stream of news about everything else that was going on.
"She loved what she did," said Donna Kessler, a longtime Times Herald-Record employee who worked beside Bedell in the Middletown newsroom for years. "She loved the people. She loved the paper. She loved everybody that walked through that door."
2019 retirement: Barbara Bedell will always be a part of the THR
Fond of veterans and candy for the newsroom
Bedell had a particular soft spot for veterans, who often appeared in her columns. Bob Hayward, adjutant for American Legion Post 151 in Middletown, remembers vets flocking around the columnist at picnics, and her holding forth one year as chief speaker at the Memorial Day parade in Middletown and Wallkill.
"She was so eloquent and on point I told her she should run for office," Hayward said.
In the newsroom, Bedell was known for the ever-replenished candy she kept for co-workers to scarf. In an almost subconscious ritual, reporters and editors would drift over to her desk for a sugar fix and a few minutes of chit-chat with Bedell, who would quietly empty fresh bags into her treat bowls each morning.
She explained in a 2007 interview that she started stocking candy on her second day of work at the Record. It was not for scavenging colleagues, but for people coming to speak to her in the newsroom with children in tow.
Bedell was a mother of four, with 14 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. She had lived for a time in Wyoming in her younger years, and proudly recalled decades later that she had been crowned "Mrs. Wyoming" in 1967. She noted that pageant honor in 2007 when the New York Senate recognized her as a "woman of distinction."
Latest honor: Barbara Bedell receives 2007 Woman of Distinction award
Dedicated to her craft
Bedell worked for the Poughkeepsie Journal before joining the Times Herald-Record in 1973. That's where she was on staff in 1969 when a momentous event occurred across the Hudson River and she was given a chance to cover it. No, she did not wish to attend the Woodstock music festival, she recalled in a 2009 Record column.
Her editor at the time offered to fly her and her husband to Bethel by helicopter to the concert, since Route 17 was blocked with traffic.
"I asked what kind of music," Bedell wrote. "He said, 'Rock.' I asked, 'What is rock?' Whatever his explanation, I wasn't interested and said, 'No thanks.'"
Skipped concert: Barbara Bedell: Bethel Woods museum puts era in perspective
Her columns included reminiscences like that, as well as stories about her family and life. But she mostly wrote about community happenings and the people whose stories she sought to elevate in newsprint. Those who kept her abreast of events on a daily basis testify to her dedication.
"She wanted people to get a sense of community," said Rabbi Pesach Burston, co-director of Chabad of Orange County, a Monroe-based organization that Bedell included in her columns.
Joe Suresky, head of the century-old Suresky car dealership in Orange County, fondly remembers Bedell as a regular guest at the catered Veteran's Day luncheon he has held for veterans for about a dozen years. He praised her as someone who cared deeply about the community and was "like an ambassador to all of Orange County."
"She was just a very classy, wonderful human being," Suresky said.
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Longtime Times Herald-Record columnist Barbara Bedell dies at age 87
