Marty Buskin was funny and charming and so serious about education that he wanted to experience it in as many ways as he could. As his obituary remembered, “he knew about schools in a way that no one else did, because in 23 years at Newsday he assigned himself to work in various districts as a teacher, a principal and a school board member, and then write about those experiences…” Recalling his unusual approach, a colleague wrote, “He is treasured for the time he sat in for a week as a student – all six feet, two inches, 230 pounds and 32 years of him – with
a seventh-grade class at Northport Junior High School.”
He won many awards, became president of the National Education Writers Association. He wrote a book.
As Newsday put it in its tribute after he died suddenly in 1976 at the age of 45, “Readers
will certainly miss his authoritative voice. And it’s hard for us to imagine Newsday without
him.”