A Little About Bob Minzesheimer

Bob Minzesheimer, who has inspired this day, sadly died in 2016.
One thing to know about him is he loved wearing his red shoes.  He would do so to almost any occasion.  So that is where the red shoes come from but that is not all about Bob.  He was quite accomplished, engaged in the community, gentle and kind.  At his service, his wife Mary asked those present to do Bob-worthy things to honor his life.  It is one reason for Red Shoes Sunday.  It invites us all to be a little better and a little kinder and so make this world a bit better.  Bob would have liked that.  

Bob was a journalist who for years wrote about books and authors for USA Today and The Journal News, and who championed the revitalization of the Ossining Public Library.

Minzesheimer was equally comfortable writing interviews and reviews, wrote thoughtful round-ups and breaking news, a carryover from his days as a political reporter and editor. Among his interviews: Maya Angelou and Norman Mailer.

Janet Maslin, the longtime New York Times book and film critic and fellow Westchester resident, called Minzesheimer “a sweet guy, a great person to talk about books with.” “Writers he interviewed really, really liked him," Maslin said. "Stephen King was crazy about him. James Patterson was crazy about him. He didn’t make an effort to charm people, but I don’t think he could help himself from doing that.”

Ben Cheever, Maslin’s husband, laughs when he says he tried but failed to find an inner arrogance in Minzesheimer, his friend of many years. “He was kind of strikingly unpretentious for a person with considerable power,” said Cheever, son of novelist John Cheever. “He would champion — sometimes in the paper, sometimes just personally — books that came along that he particularly admired.”

Tom Curley, former president and CEO of USA Today and The Associated Press, recalled Minzesheimer as “an absolute delight and an inspiring journalist unafraid to ask the salient questions and find creative ways to write about the answers.”

In 1996, Minzesheimer married writer Mary McDonagh Murphy. Their children are James and Kate.  Asked what she wanted her children to remember about their father, Murphy said: "They already know how kind and thoughtful their father has been, but the integrity he brought to everything he touched was kind of remarkable. Bob had a really vigorous, keen, robust mind housed in his lovely, gentle, mild, relaxed body. It was an incredible combination. Anybody who could carry that brain that quietly and relaxed, I was completely hooked." Scroll through the archive of the myriad stories Minzesheimer penned for USA Today and you’ll find a writer’s voice. He opened a 2008 story this way: “David Carr, the author, journalist and former crack addict, arrives for an interview armed only with iced coffee and a pack of Camels.”

Minzesheimer served on the board of the Ossining Library and presided over a $15.8 million upgrade, to include a theater, art gallery and cafe. The new library opened in 2007, its reading room named for John Cheever, whose observations of suburban life put Westchester on the map. He also organized the Friends of the Ossining Public Library group. Peter Capek, who served on the library board with him, said there is one unfinished piece of business: "Though we never achieved it, he argued forcefully for us to do a community read of a book in both Spanish and English, as a way to link the two communities. Perhaps we can accomplish that now, in his memory."

Minzesheimer grew up a Dodgers fan, but as a suburban dad, he switched allegiance to his son's favorite team: The Boston Red Sox. He had a soft spot for baseball, penning a lovely Daily Beast recollection of a 1965 baseball game at West Point — a campus better known for football — at which the 15-year-old Minzesheimer met President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He got Ike to autograph his keepsake, a scorecard on which Minzesheimer had dutifully recorded the ebb and flow of a game that included Roger Staubach going hitless.

Jen Laird White, Nyack’s mayor, was a friend by marriage. "He married one of my best friends, and the first time I ever met him, I knew it was a perfect match," White said. "Every bit of the magic he put into his writing, he put into his family.” Rob Fleder was a longtime friend who found Minzesheimer’s enthusiasm infectious, whether it was for a new book or the Ossining High School girls basketball team during the years Saniya Chong wowed the crowds. “I don’t think I’d ever been to a high school girls basketball game, but he was tremendously enthusiastic and we used to go all the time," Fleder said. "They were excellent.” Fleder said Minzesheimer wore his brilliance lightly, a storyteller who “loved to read stories and write about people who told stories, which isn’t easy to do.”

Born Feb. 11, 1950, in Brooklyn, to Kathryn (Pfeiffer) and Phillip Minzesheimer, he grew up in Queens and graduated from Francis Lewis High School in 1968. He was the first member of his family to go to college, graduating from Colgate in 1972. He earned his masters in journalism from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in 1973 and joined the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle to cover city schools. In 1977, Minzesheimer took a sabbatical to be an assistant professor of journalism at St. John Fisher College in Rochester. In 1982, he covered Congress for Gannett News Service and USA Today, where he eventually became politics editor. He wrote about books from 1997 to 2014.

Minzesheimer battled cancer for years. “He was so brave,” Ben Cheever said. “He just acted like there was nothing wrong. And that’s really hard to do. Most people when they get really sick, they get a little pissed off. He may have been, but he never let it out.”

Murphy said her husband was fully aware of his blessings. "Nobody in his family went to college. Bob got his master's at Columbia. His life was more than what he thought it would be, and he was very clear about that. He lived in the world of ideas. He lived there and he knew what a privilege that was."


And the red shoes?  He wore them almost everywhere.