James Fitzgerald, 30-year Newsday employee who rose to senior VP, dies at 93

From the pressroom with its printing presses to the pressroom where journalists toil, James "Fitz" Fitzgerald had a hand in all things Newsday for 30 years.

In many roles culminating in two senior vice president titles, "he was the heart of operations," said former New York Newsday publisher Steven Isenberg. "Everything from press and delivery to makeup," Isenberg said, referring to the arrangement of elements on a page. "All the new presses that brought about color, increased capacity, inserting, collating for a bigger paper, creation of the Sunday paper, the movement into computerized production — he was in charge of the whole guts of the infrastructure, including finance."

The longtime Garden City resident, who retired in 1996 and in his later years lived in Boynton Beach, Florida, died of natural causes Jan. 18 in a hospice in nearby Delray Beach. He was 93.

"I remember him talking about working late at night with the pressman and going on some of the paper delivery routes with the truckers," said one granddaughter, Erin McNamara, of Long Beach. "And negotiating contracts with the unions. He was a good people person. He had a sense of what people needed and how to bring them together, and he could read people quite well."

"He knew the problems that could come to those people who had to work [overnight] shifts that could affect their personal lives," said his daughter, Cathy Morrissey, of Manhasset. "He was very sensitive to those things. He liked to ask questions: ‘How is this affecting you? How can we make it better?’ "

She added, "I think what he liked about Newsday was that it was a whole empire with so many different branches to explore."

James Edward Fitzgerald Jr. was born Oct. 15, 1932, in Brooklyn, the son of James Edward Fitzgerald and Catherine Michel Fitzgerald, jewelry enamelers both with their own business and for others. An infant sister died when he was 5. Fitzgerald graduated from the borough’s now-defunct Franklin K. Lane High School in 1950.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration in accounting from Pace College, now Pace University, in 1954, while simultaneously working as a runner at the New York Stock Exchange. In the summers of 1953 and 1954, he was enrolled in the Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Class, an undergraduate program for obtaining a USMC commission. After marrying Lillian Patricia Walsh in mid-1954, he did two years’ service with the Marine Corps Reserve at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, rising to the rank of first lieutenant.

Following his discharge, he worked as a certified public accountant at what was then Lybrand, Ross Brothers and Montgomery, now PricewaterhouseCoopers, in New York. He left in 1964 to join the magazine division of the publishing company Reuben H. Donnelley, and two years later came to Newsday as a staff accountant.

Fitzgerald was promoted to assistant controller in 1967 and controller in 1971. He became assistant general manager in January 1978, and four months later, vice president, operations. He was named senior vice president, finance and administration, in 1981, remaining in that position until becoming senior vice president, special projects, in 1994. He retired two years later.

The family, by now including four children, had moved from Queens — where Fitzgerald had meticulously renovated a fixer-upper home — to Garden City around 1981, his daughter said. Fitzgerald and his wife bought a Boynton Beach vacation home the following year, eventually living there year-round. Lillian Fitzgerald died in 2022.

A daughter, Theresa Fitzgerald McCormack, had died in 2011, at age 53, of cancer. "That was the heartache of his life," Morrissey said.

Always interested in exploring new realms, Fitzgerald picked up golf in the 1980s — becoming a member of the Cherry Valley Club in Garden City — and flying in the 1990s. He bought a Piper aircraft with a friend and would pilot it to visit family in Connecticut or even venture as far afield as Florida.

At 91, he went with his family, by now including four great-grandchildren, to Disney World in Florida. "I said to him, ‘Maybe we could get you a wheelchair or something. There's a lot of walking,’ " recalled granddaughter McNamara. "And he's, like, ‘That's for the old people!’ He was on the rides with us. He kept up."

Throughout his life, "He was a glass half-full kind of person," Morrissey said. "He was serious about his work and providing for us, but he had a very gentle, easy sense of humor."

In addition to his daughter, he was survived by sons James III and Patrick, both of Queens; eight grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Visitation was on Wednesday at Fairchild Sons Funeral Home in Garden City. Following a Mass on Thursday at The Church of Saint Joseph in that village, he was buried at the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury.