Kenneth Hilfman, educator, journalist
BY JAY LEVIN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Kenneth Hilfman was surrounded by journalism. His parents ran a Greenwich Village newsstand and stationery store. He was a bicycle-riding paperboy. He toiled on his high school and college papers. During a 34-year teaching career at Bogota High School, he was adviser for the student paper, The Klaxon.
HILFMAN
But it wasn't until retirement that Mr. Hilfman, who died May 14 at age 88, finally called himself a working journalist.
Always with camera, Mr. Hilfman covered local doings and took pictures for the Teaneck-based Jewish Standard and the weekly Community News, which serves Fair Lawn, where Mr. Hilfman lived.
His assignments were quintessential community journalism: A tiny dog named Piper receives therapy certification; a rabbi tests his shofar before the High Holy Days; a teenager collects socks for the needy.
Mr. Hilfman pursued it all with gusto, well into his 80s.
"Ken was a dear, charming, Old World gentleman," said Rebecca Kaplan Boroson, retired editor of the Jewish Standard. "It was his great joy to get out there and do things for the paper."
His family said Mr. Hilfman's late-in-life avocation fulfilled his dream of being a photojournalist.
His former students knew Mr. Hilfman, chairman of the social studies department, as an inspiring educator.
"If I had to name my most memorable teacher, the one who had the greatest influence on me, it would be him," said Harvey Silverglate, Bogota High School class of 1960, a civil liberties and criminal defense lawyer in Boston.
"He took such a keen interest in the well-being and education of his students, and in their later success," said Silverglate, who was associate editor of The Klaxon. "He wanted his students to do something in life that would leave the world a better place. That was his message to us."
Mr. Hilfman, who retired from teaching in 1985, attended most Bogota High reunions, including the 50th of the class of 1960.
"He never lost touch with his students," said his wife, Miriam. "He always answered their letters."
Silverglate, an author of books and newspaper columns, said Mr. Hilfman "insisted that I send him every column and book I wrote, and in some instances drafts of chapters.
"He'd always get back to me with astute observations. In effect, he maintained his role as my trusted teacher."
That Mr. Hilfman took up photography and news writing after his teaching days "doesn't indicate he didn't like his teaching work," Silverglate added. "He did. He loved it, and he loved his students. But this was a man of broad interests, and writing and photojournalism were his additional loves."
Mr. Hilfman and his wife recently moved to an assisted living center in Ann Arbor, Mich.
He is survived by his wife of 64 years; daughters Lesley Hume of Ann Arbor and Karen Hilfman of Los Angeles; three grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. Services and burial were in Ann Arbor.
Email: levin@northjersey.com