Friends of the Greenbelt News Review were saddened to learn of the death last week, on January 15, of their colleague, long-time reporter, news editor and former board president Elaine Skolnik. Perhaps no single Greenbelt figure has been as influential in the News Review’s history over more than six decades than Elaine Ruth Skolnik Nicholson. She was 95 years old.
Elaine was born on June 17, 1925, in Patterson, N.J., to Joseph and Mary Cohen. The Cohens owned a small convenience store around which Elaine, their only child, played. She married Alfred Skolnik in 1947. In 1952 the family, which now included 4-year-old Barbara and 1-year-old Rita, moved to Greenbelt. They first lived in the 45 Court of Ridge Road where several members of the News Review staff also resided. When their son Richard was born in 1957, they moved to the 2 Court of Northway.
Al’s full-time job was chief of inter-program statistics at the Social Security Administration. But his dream job was to be a journalist, Elaine once told me. She claimed that she herself had no talent for writing.
Elaine enjoyed reminiscing about how she fell in love with Greenbelt on first sight. “Oh, those tall pines and oaks, the lake, the large green areas, the playgrounds,” she would exclaim. “It was such a sweet life.” Al, and later Elaine, were drawn into working on the Greenbelt News Review by their 45 Court neighbors. Al focused on the “hard news,” writing about Greenbelt Homes Inc. and the city council. Elaine volunteered to help write the Our Neighbors column. Not long after she volunteered for Our Neighbors, she saw a moving van pull up to her court. The main columnist for Our Neighbors was departing, and Elaine nervously became “It.”
In her first solo column she offered condolences naming the wrong person dying. She anguished over her mistake when that family was sent flowers. Despite her embarrassment, she continued to write and to organize fund drives for the ever-impoverished newspaper. One of her favorite stories from the early days happened one evening when she and two other staffers were ready to walk home after a long night of working on the paper. It was 2 a.m. and snowing outside so they called the police and requested a ride home. The policeman who arrived said sternly, “Ladies, there are only two kinds of people out on a night like this – robbers and victims.” He then locked them in his patrol car and drove them home.
Another favorite story was the time the newspaper copy was on its way to the print shop in Hyattsville, encased in a large envelope and strapped onto the back of a motorcycle. It fell off somewhere along Kenilworth Avenue and was lost. Staff rushed to the office, then located in the basement of 15 Parkway, and rummaged through trash cans to reconstruct the paper – and maintain their mantra of never missing an issue and being the longest running volunteer newspaper in the country.
In 1965 the newspaper was sued for $2,000,000. As Elaine would recall years later, she was stirring chocolate pudding in the kitchen one afternoon when there was a knock on the door. When she answered, a man in a uniform asked for Al in order to deliver an official looking package. Elaine said that Al was at work but she could take the package. He gave it to her. When she opened it, she was stunned to discover that the News Review, as well as Alfred E. Skolnik as the newspaper’s president, were being sued for libel by a prominent local developer, Charles Bresler. Bresler charged that the paper had published defamatory remarks made by citizens at public sessions of the city council.
Thus began a four-year legal battle where the lower courts awarded Bresler $17,500 in damages. That verdict was upheld in the Court of Appeals. With the assistance of a lawyer, Roger Clark, who provided pro bono representation through the Washington Post, the Skolniks were eventually vindicated in 1970 by the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark unanimous Freedom of the Press decision.
For Al and Elaine, the legal battle impacted their private lives. They spent much of their time assisting the lawyers in providing documents for their briefs, raising the money needed to cover court costs in case they lost again. The anguish was long-lasting.
In 1974, Al and Elaine were named Outstanding Citizens of Greenbelt by the Greenbelt Labor Day Festival. In addition to her work on the newspaper, Elaine served on the city Park and Recreation Advisory Board, was president of the Co-op Nursery School and vice president of the Co-op kindergarten. She was a key figure in the movement to preserve Greenbelt as a planned community during the 1970s and early 1980s when the city endured many development issues. She also worked – behind the scenes – for various candidates for city council and GHI. She organized courts with court captains to ensure that everyone voted. She spent hours on the phone every day. Her phone number was 474-6060 and she became known as Agent 60.
In 1977, her world collapsed when Al suddenly died of a heart attack. Al had been her soul mate, her supporter, her constant companion. She relied on him to critique her stories as she advanced from the Our Neighbors column to investigative reporter on zoning and development issues. But she had great reserves of strength and perseverance. She reluctantly became the president of the News Review, serving in that capacity for nine years. She became the guru on sewage treatment plants when the Greenbriar condominiums were being built during a sewer moratorium from 1970 to 1977. Lawyers and developers who were generally hostile to the press, often commented on her fairness, sensitivity and caring. She prided herself in her unbiased and factual reporting.
Former editor Harry Zubkoff once wrote “the News Review is the major unifying element within the city, the force which has done more than any other single civic activity to make a city out of a housing project.” Today many residents of Greenbelt are unfamiliar with Elaine’s achievements, and those of her late husband, Al. But, without their leadership, the News Review might not have survived and maintained its decades-long influence.
Elaine organized her final fundraising activity in 1985 seeking volunteers, more advertising and donations as the News Review was once again in dire financial straits. A committee soon raised over $10,000; 79 people volunteered to help. In 1986, the paper was in better financial shape, and new blood was seemingly ready to step up; it was time for her to step down.
She had moved from Greenbelt several years earlier and married Victor Nicholson in 1985. Vic would drive her to Greenbelt every Tuesday afternoon so she could carry on her activities as news editor. She also mentored many University of Maryland journalism students who volunteered for the newspaper.
Elaine and Vic resided in Leisure World in Silver Spring where she enjoyed social activities that included choral singing and dancing. Her children and grandchildren lived nearby, and she always had time for them. In 2005, Vic died and Elaine was once again alone. As the years went by, she began to suffer from dementia and entered a nursing facility where she died on January 15, 2021. She is survived by her daughters Barbara Goldman and Rita Skolnik (Steve Crowley), her son Richard (Robyn) Skolnik; grandchildren Amy Goldman, Jennifer and Alan Skolnik and Kenny and Corey Crowley.
A private service and burial took place on January 17. Donations in Elaine’s memory may be made to an Alzheimer’s organization.