Survivor of the sinking of the Andrea Doria.


Obituary from The New York Times:
Morris S. Novik, 93, Early Director of WNYC
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER
Published: November 12, 1996

Morris S. Novik, who directed WNYC, the municipal radio station, during the administration of Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, died on Sunday at St. Vincent's Hospital. Mr. Novik, who lived in Chelsea, would have turned 93 on Friday.

His sister, Mary Pepperman of Manhattan, said he died from injuries suffered in a fall.

It was during Mr. Novik's tenure that the Mayor made two of the most memorable broadcasts in radio history, on July 1 and July 8, 1945, when he read the Sunday comics to the children of the city during a newspaper strike.

After his nearly eight years at WNYC, Mr. Novik and his brother Harry bought and operated a number of radio stations, among them WLIB, which they later sold.

He became a founder of the La Guardia Memorial Association, which was a force in the creation of the Fiorello H. La Guardia Community College in Queens and the La Guardia High School of Music and Arts in Manhattan. He was a consultant on broadcasting to George Meany, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and his successor, Lane Kirkland.

But Mr. Novik's most prominent role was as director of WNYC, a post he held from Feb. 9, 1938, when the Mayor administered the oath for the $7,500-a-year job, until he resigned Dec. 31, 1945, at the end of Mayor La Guardia's three terms.

While Mr. Novik was director, the station, founded in 1924, was subjected to charges that it disseminated Communist propaganda and that the Mayor used it for political purposes. The City Council became so embarrassed by WNYC's broadcasts of its proceedings -- so amusing that some listeners hurried to City Hall to actually witness the fun -- that it voted in 1940 to ban the broadcasts.

While all this was going on, Mr. Novik busied himself by improving WNYC's programming and reputation. He increased its presentation of classical music, championed the works of American composers and supported civic and educational programs and an emphasis on the American way of life.

''Within the city's confines, more than 7.5 million people live and work and go quietly about their business,'' he said in 1941. ''Our job, the job of a municipal radio station, is to make their lives better and fuller. We feel that one of the ways we can play our part in the community is by bringing home to New Yorkers the wonders of their city and keeping them in touch with the many things that happen in it. Doing that makes for greater interest and understanding and for a pride in this great democracy in which we all live.''

On public affairs programs like ''The Schools Speak,'' gifted students engaged in extemporaneous discussions on significant topics. On ''America in Story,'' short stories offered a literary tour of America. Dramatic sketches from history and literature were presented in cooperation with the New York Principals Association.

In 1945, the station received a Peabody Award for public service. It had won other honors from the National Association of Composers and Authors and the Institute for Radio Education.

Mr. Novik, who was born in Nevel in northwestern Russia, came to the United States at 13 as the eldest of the five children of Samuel and Rose Novik. The Noviks settled in what is now the East Village. With only an elementary school education, Mr. Novik went to work for various socialist and labor organizations.

By his early 20's, he had become the entertainment director of Unity House, a vacation resort in the Poconos that was operated by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. By the mid-1920's, he was the chairman of the Young People's Socialist League, sometimes referred to as the Yipsels, which proselytized for socialism and the Socialist Party among public school students.

When Mayor La Guardia appointed him director of WNYC, he was a secretary to the New York County Committee of the American Labor Party.

Mr. Novik's wife of 62 years, the former Manya Davidson, died in 1993.