I’d never heard of Lee E. Koppelman, let alone met him, prior to being assigned by the New York Times as its Suffolk County correspondent in 1973. In fact, I’d never even been out on Long Island—not to Suffolk, not to its sibling Nassau County.
I was enjoying covering New York City as a metropolitan reporter, a promotion after having served as a clerk to the executive editor, A. M. Rosenthal, upon graduating from Brandeis University in Massachusetts.
I had expected to continue on the metropolitan beat, which generated a lot of bylines for a young man who was dedicated to scoreboard journalism, and who was prepared to work at all odd hours and on his days off.
In that competitive world, a fistful of Front Page stories each month not only massaged the ego, it offered the delicious satisfaction of demoralizing competitors. I was, after all, a boy from Bombay (now called Mumbai), and – in the view of some of those competitors, at least – what did I know about writing in English? (Surprising that so few were aware that my native India had been part of the British Raj; fewer knew that English was a national language in this former colony; and fewer still knew that I was brought up speaking and writing in English.)
I had not expected to be yanked off and dispatched to alien territory – Suffolk County. My initial reaction was that the new posting was a demotion, that my competitors had prevailed by pouring the necessary dose of poison into the ears of my editors who, like everyone else in The Times’ cavernous news room, relished the dastardly handiwork of gossipers and flibbertigibbets. The late Philip L. Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, reportedly said that journalism was the “first rough draft of history”; he might have added that those who prepare that draft most always do so in an environment characterized by bitter tussling for real estate on Page One. In daily journalism, such bylines are the coin of the realm, to be coveted at all cost. I was skeptical that Suffolk County would fetch me as many prominently positioned bylines as New York City.
But my editors assured me that moving to Suffolk County was actually a promotion: I would be my own boss, a bureau chief. I then asked a colleague – who occasionally spent summer weekends with friends in the fashionable Hamptons – for some tips about how to approach my new assignment. He smirked.
“Be sure to talk to the potato farmers on the South Fork, they can be very helpful,” he said. “Then there’s this guy who wants to build apartments on their fields.”
My colleague was just plain wrong about everything. The potato farmers were lodged on Long Island’s North Fork – which my colleague had never visited – and “this guy” turned out to be a slim man named Lee E. Koppelman who strove to preserve farms and open spaces and not freight them with the detritus of urbanization.
(Noel Gish of the Suffolk County Historical Society, famously wrote of Koppelman: “The challenge at the time was balancing the competing demands for housing, transportation corridors, public facilities and energy needs while also envisioning future commercial and industrial development, coupled with preserving open space…Koppelman’s concern to safeguard the fresh water supply centered on lessening environmental contaminants, ranging from landfills, to fertilizer, pesticide use, and even to the storage of gasoline and oil. His concerns with the purity and protection of Long Island’s water supply eventually focused on efforts to the preserve the Long Island’s Pine Barrens region. As with all of Koppelman’s suggestions, his planning was the result of research based on the most current scientific data. The research findings provided the planning department and Koppelman the necessary momentum in their struggle to get things approved even if the prevailing political winds did not always blow in their favor at first.”)
I remember that I met Koppelman at the Long Island Regional Planning Board in Hauppauge. (The organization is now known as the Long Island Regional Planning Council.) He was gracious, he was forthcoming, and he immediately set about explaining the arcane workings of Suffolk and Nassau counties. He was not trained as an architect: Koppelman received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the City College of New York; and then a master’s degree and a doctorate in planning and public administration followed.
I wound up spending four years on Long Island, and while there were numerous helpful sources during that time, none more so than Lee Koppelman. It would be no hyperbole to say that he served as my guru.
Much of his “guru-ness” was for background purposes. But he allowed himself to be quoted enough that some of my editors would ask me, teasingly, if my articles should carry a joint byline: Pranay Gupte and Lee E. Koppelman.
That was, of course, a long time ago: I arrived in Suffolk County in 1973, and left in 1977 for a Times assignment covering the United Nations.
When I reflect on those years, I invariably think of five key lessons that Koppelman taught me, lessons that have served me well in my journalism and in my subsequent career as an author of nonfiction books:
One, nothing is what it seems. There’s usually a story behind the story.
Two, if you think that you’re done with asking questions, think again. That means there’s always another question to be asked.
Three, a good reporter should be skeptical, not cynical.
Four, the importance of listening nonjudgmentally cannot be overestimated.
And five, don’t compose the headline before you write your story. Although headlines are conventionally the prerogative of copy editors, far too many reporters see a headline in their head well before they’ve actually sat down to compose their story. Call it bias, call it slanting, but it represents a breakdown of the canons of good journalism.
I always thought that I was a reasonably diligent reporter – but in all those years of knowing Lee E. Koppelman, I never once asked him what his middle initially stood for.
In the event, I found out not long ago from his wife Constance – better known as Connie – that his middle name is Edward. The name on his birth certificate, issued in 1928, is Edward Leon. The name got changed around when he started school. It was Connie who gave him the name “Lee.”
Koppelman is in his ninth decade now, and he’s still teaching – at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, Long Island, not far from where he and Connie live. I envy his students for being recipients of the wisdom of his extraordinary experience, and I laud Koppelman for his continuing willingness to share that experience. Those students are very fortunate indeed – just as I was when I met Lee E. Koppelman way back in the last millennium.