Irving Raskin Levine
(August 26, 1922 – March 27, 2009) was an American journalist and longtime correspondent for NBC News. During his 45-year career, Levine reported from more than two dozen countries. He was the first American television correspondent to be accredited in the Soviet Union. He wrote three non-fiction books on life in the USSR, each of which became a bestseller.Why write about him, you ask, well, I'll tell you. At Newark Leader, where I worked for 20 years, for a number of years we worked with Denison Univerisity, and assisted with the production of their newspaper, The Denisonian.
We did the typesetting and assisted the students in getting it ready for press. We even printed it at one time.
The had their own staff which came to our plant and did the work, getting it ready for press. One semester, the editor of the paper was Dan Levine. He became a favorite, very personable, and he worked well with our staff. I think we had a restaurant then and he even came out and ate a few times. Really liked him.
At the end of his year, on graduation weekend, he came to our plant with his parents, and asked if he could show them where he worked and showed them around the plant.
"This is my Mom, and my Dad, Irving R. Levine." We had always pronounced his name, Dan Lavin, when in reality he was Dan Laveen, and he never mentioned his parents, probably never came up. I was very familiar with his Dad, had heard his reports for many years, he was a favorite newscaster and reporter of mine.
So, I took Irving R. Levine and his wife on a plant tour and explained "offset printing" to them. He was very attentive, asked many questions, very gracious, and extremely interested in the process. He and his wife were very gracious, just Dan's Mom and Dad.
