Throughout his half-century as a newspaper editor, Evan Jenkins was known for his mastery of language and grammar, and, most of all, for his absolute integrity.
Jenkins, 72, a former Newsday and New York Times editor who died of cancer yesterday in his Huntington home, was “adament about getting it right,” said John Van Doorn, a former editor who worked with Jenkins on both papers. “No one, no advertisers, nothing could influence him except proper news judgment.”
At the same time, Van Doorn said, “he was the gentlest man, kind, courteous. I never heard him raise his voice in the 40 years I knew him.”
Meticulous in word interpretation, Jenkins put it all together in a book called “That or Which, and Why: A Usage Guide for Thoughtful Writers and Editors,” which he wrote in later years when he was the grammar arbiter at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.
“The book is droll, funny and very accurate, which sums up his personality,” said Thomas Collins of Northport, a retired Newsday editor and Washington Bureau Chief. At the copy desk, Jenkins was “straight with the facts, as objective as could be achieved,” Collins said. Outside of the newsroom, “he was a lot of fun.”
Van Doorn recalled how Jenkins would sing at holiday parties “usually the Irish songs in a beautiful tenor voice. He was also a terrific third baseman on our softball teams and a great poker player.
Jenkins, who joined Newsday in 1961, was working as a copy editor when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. “Through every crisis, Evan was very calm. He kept everyone calm and everyone working,” said Van Doorn, now a columnist for the North County Times in the San Diego, Calif., area.
Jenkins was “a journalist’s journalist. He could take the most complex subject and turn it into clear, readable copy,” said Stanley Green of Bay Shore, a retired Newsday editor. “He was low-key and very diplomatic. No one ever got mad at Evan Jenkins.”
Jenkins left Newsday for the New York Times in 1966, starting as a national education correspondent, serving on the national and foreign desks and becoming an assistant news editor in 1975. He supervised the Times’s training program for copy editors, and noted editorial gaffes in the paper’s “Winners and Sinners” newsletter.
He left the Times in 1991, briefly edited the Racing Times and then went to the Columbia graduate school where until recently he wrote a column on language usage for the Columbia Journalism Review. He was one of “the greatest grammarians I ever met,” said Mike Dorman, author and former Newsday correspondent.
Over the years Jenkins continued his friendships with Newsday colleagues. Haig Chekanian, a Smithtown attorney and former reporter who met Jenkins socially after he left the paper, said, “He enriched the lives of everyone he met.”
Born in Brooklyn, Jenkins grew up in Greenwich, Conn., and graduated from Staples High School in Westport. He married his high school sweetheart, Diane, in 1955, and the couple lived in former GI barracks on the Wesleyan University campus, in Middletownn, Conn., where he graduated in 1957. He worked as a reporter for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette before coming to Newsday.
The couple has lived in Huntington since 1963. “We had a lot of fun together,” Diane Jenkins said.
“He was a terrific father. He reached out to me in ways that I sometimes didn’t realize,” said their son, Peter, of New London, Conn. Besides his wife and son, Jenkins is survived by two other sons, John of Westfield, N.J., and David of Warren, Conn., and a daughter, Anne of Rocky Point.
He was cremated and a memorial will be private.