Vada O. Crosby: An appreciation for noted Westchester journalist who covered Mount Vernon

Vada Crosby, a highly respected journalist, graphics designer, and seminarian, died Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, following surgery at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest, but he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer this past November. He was 61.

Crosby was a reporter in Mount Vernon and Yonkers for the Gannett Westchester Newspapers, now The Journal News/lohud.com, before joining The Hartford Courant in Connecticut.

His journalism career began while he was still a student at Mount Vernon High School. He was hired as a stringer on the cop beat for The Daily Argus, the city’s local newspaper, owned by the Gannett Newspapers.

His initial assignment was to write news articles based on his daily review of the police blotter and other public records. He quickly gained the confidence of the police department while earning his way from stringer to full-time reporter.

Crosby was known for keeping confidences, which gained him large measure of trust from Mount Vernon informants, politicians, cops, and criminals.

“There was nowhere in Mount Vernon where he was not respected,” said David Sheingold, a former Journal News reporter, who is now an adjunct professor at Columbia University School of Journalism.

To prove it, he said that during the goodbye party in 1997, Mayor Ronald Blackwood, the city’s first black mayor, came in to wish him well. In a city of more than 65,000 people, “that was no small thing,” he said.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Crosby covered such breaking stories as the Mount Vernon angle of the notorious 1981 Brink’s Robbery in Nyack, in which a security guard and two police officers were shot to death by former members of the Weather Underground and members of the Black Liberation Army. Evidence found in New Jersey led police to their safehouse on Mount Vernon’s East 3rd Street near New York’s Hutchison River Parkway.

He contributed to coverage of the administration of Mount Vernon Mayor Thomas E. Sharpe, who worked to revitalize the city and make it a Democratic stronghold. He wrote about Mayor Sharpe's death in 1984 of a stroke.

Crosby, who was Black, was part of a multi-racial team of reporters who produced an award-winning series of articles on Mount Vernon's changing demographics that was based on the 1980 census and detailed the shift in the city's population from majority white to majority black.

On the police beat, he also wrote about racial inequities, poverty, education, and crime prevention. He broke stories on corruption by officers who stole money from drug busts and on other wrongdoings within the department. “He had an impact on the city,” said Ned McCormack, his former editor.

Before the 1998 merger of Gannett’s 10 local newspapers into The Journal News, The Daily Argus left its Mount Vernon office on Gramatan Avenue and moved to Yonkers Avenue to share space with the Herald Statesman. Crosby’s duties expanded to cover the news in Yonkers as well.

In January 1997, Crosby left Gannett to join the Hartford Courant in Hartford, Connecticut. There he worked as a page designer and copy editor. Six years later, he joined the Graphics Department, which was named among the best designed newspapers in America. In 2011, he was laid off.

In 2007, while working at the Courant, Crosby attended Hartford International University, which is also called Harford Seminary. There he earned a Master of Divinity degree. After receiving it, he conducted writing classes for masters and doctoral candidates. In addition, he taught a writing course for the seminary’s certificate program. He also performed many marriage services in Connecticut.

Crosby had been married to Franco Roselli of Rome, Italy, who predeceased him. Known for his tailored clothes and fashion sense, around 2007, Crosby began splitting his time between his home in Windsor, Connecticut, and Rome. While there, started a small graphics design company, Illesor Design.

In 2015, Crosby was called back to work as a graphics designer by the Hartford Courant. While there, he moonlighted doing graphics for Christian Community Action, a nonprofit, nonsectarian agency, which provides short and long-term housing, food, and clothing to poor and homeless families. He was hired fulltime by CCA and was the nonprofit’s Marketing Associate and Graphics Designer until 2018.

That year, in February, Crosby joined the Law Firm of Halloran Sage as the Senior Media Coordinator. While at the full-service Connecticut law practice, he provided design presentations for court litigation. He handled the graphics for the firm, as well as producing and editing promotional and informational videos. He worked there until his death.

He also had been a member of the National Association of Black Journalists.

Vada O. Crosby was born on November 14, 1961, at Mount Vernon Hospital. His mother, the former Dorothy Brice, was a housekeeper, and his father, Thomas Crosby, was a factory worker.

He attended and graduated from Mount Vernon public schools. In addition to Crosby’s Master of Divinity degree, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism and communication from Fordham University.

Crosby leaves a brother, Alvin Crosby of Mount Vernon; a sister, Dianna Johnson of Concord, New Hampshire; and a niece Sarah Johnson of Manchester, New Hampshire.

A memorial service will be held later.

Victoria Everett is a former reporter and editor for The Journal News and lohud.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Vada O. Crosby: An appreciation