By Jason Fields

Riverdale is filled with distinguished people — the great and people who knew the great. Ed Silverman is both.

In the last 86 years, a lot of history was made with Mr. Silverman standing right there, holding a microphone.

His reminiscences have found a home on the Op-Ed page of The Riverdale Press for the last eight years, and he could easily write one piece a week for The Press for another eight years and not get down to the dull stuff. Stories are what he collected in a more-than-60-year career as a journalist in print, on radio and on TV.

So, what’s the man behind the camera like? A man who was friends and even sparred with heavyweight legend Rocky Marciano? Who shared meals with Jackie Robinson, knew baseball great Ted Williams, made prime ministers wait, bought (with others) a birthday cupcake for President Harry S. Truman and talked with him while he ate it?

He’s all of those things, sure, but there’s more. He’s confident in his own skin and of his place in the world around him.
Tall, slim, but wiry for his age, he gripped a reporter’s hand with surprising strength and talked standing up for the first 45 minutes of a recent interview at his West 246th Street home. After the 45 minutes, he didn’t so much tire as have mercy on his guest, clearing a place to sit down on a couch covered in mementos.

He picked one up. It was a brass blimp, or rather a dirigible. He pointed to a misspelling of its name and told the story of having seen the tragic Nazi airship Hindenburg passing over his childhood home in New Jersey, on its way to Lakehurst, N.J., and fiery destruction. He was 10 years old when it happened, he remembered.

A little digging on a coffee table literally overflowing with memories and Mr. Silverman came up with a golden tiepin in the shape of a World War II patrol boat — PT-109. It was a gift from President John F. Kennedy, commemorating his heroic service as the boat’s commander.

Mr. Silverman covered the 1960 presidential campaign, and later “saved the world from nuclear destruction,” as he put it, by sharing his Cuban cigar with the commander-in-chief as the world waited for the Cuban missile crisis to play out.