Donald Schwartz Obituary

Schwartz, Donald M. Veteran Chicago Sun-Times reporter and feature writer passed away Friday (September 4) evening in his home in Northfield, IL. Funeral services were held at Sunset Memorial Lawns by Chicago Jewish Funerals (847)-229-8822. Don was with the Chicago Sun-Times for 33 years and wrote major pieces on subjects as diverse as the development of the anti-ballistic missile and the gold standard. He interviewed personalities such as President Lyndon Baines Johnson, physicist and inventor Leo Szilard, artist LeRoy Neiman and many more. Born and raised in Clayton, MO, he was a graduate of the Colombia School of Journalism at the University of Montana (class of 1944). He faced a tough job market filled with journalists returning to their stateside jobs after WWII and began as a radio basketball "color-man" in Bowling Green, KY, moved on to radio news in Gary, IN at WWCA, then to radio in South Bend, IN. He eventually started working at the Chicago Sun-Times and was a feature writer during the "golden years" of Irv Kupcinet, Bill Mauldin, Roger Ebert, and his close friend Jerome Holtzman, and stayed until the early 1990s. While at the Sun-Times his passion for photography led to the publication of his photos including a shot of of Martin Luther King Jr. published in a book by Time-Life. He married his college sweetheart, Patt, in 1948 and is survived by his beloved wife and two children, Don Schwartz and Yocheved Seidman (nee Lisa Schwartz) and grandson. Don was a huge music lover and by age 14 was attending concerts of the Duke Ellington Band and other jazz greats at the Tune Town Ballroom in St Louis. Friend of the family, musician Lazer Lloyd, wrote of him, "He was a great man and I feel very lucky to have met him. He was as we say a man's man. Music is the language of the soul and he had impeccable taste and rhythm which can only happen when someone is in-tune with their own essence and soul and that he was." A quintessential Chicago thinker and lover of life Don wrote, "I'm not very good at saying things briefly. But as a kind of personal tour de force for a wind-up, I'll try it. I've thought that at the end of life I'd be quite satisfied to tell my children one thing in a single sentence: Try to stand for quality." The family is requesting donations in Don's memory be sent to Congregation B'nai Ruven (call 773-743-5434 or send to 6350 N. Whipple St., Chicago, IL 60659). To express condolences to the family or to share memories of Don or to attend the Shivah, send email to his daughter [email protected] or call 773-597-7690.