Jimmy Breslin

Known for decades as the voice of New York, writer Jimmy Breslin built his career on the singular task of representing his city's least privileged residents. Born in Queens in 1930, Breslin began his career as a copyboy at the Long Island Press during the 1940s. He eventually became a writer, settling at the New York Herald Tribune in 1963 where his column became one of the paper's major attractions. He published his second book, a chronicle of the New York Mets' 1962 season called Can't Anybody Here Play This Game around this time, and began cementing his reputation for exploring news and events from the everyday, working person's point of view. While covering the funeral of President John F. Kennedy, Breslin famously interviewed the gravedigger who was being paid $3.10 an hour to prepare the late president's cemetery plot. After moving over to the New York Daily News in 1976, Breslin soon attracted a stranger form of attention than usual when then at-large serial killer David Berkowitz (then known only as "Son of Sam") began writing him letters at the newspaper, portions of which were published. The '80s would find Breslin winning a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary and the George Polk Award, in addition to starring in his own late night series, "Jimmy Breslin's People" (ABC, 1986), in which he interviewed working class New Yorkers. Breslin continued writing his column for Newsday until 2004, and his many books-including the best-selling mob novel The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, his popular memoir I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me: A Memoir and his 2008 look at the Mafia, The Good Rat: A True Story-remained popular amongst not just New Yorkers, but readers everywhere. Breslin passed away in 2017. He was 88 years old.