Gerald Martin Connors

Gerald Martin Connors, 88, retired New York Daily News Wall Street reporter and US Navy combat veteran of both World War II and Korea, died May 25 at his home at Sleepy Hollow, NY following a month-long stay in the hospital.   He was a gentleman to the end, compassionate, polite and humorous. He was the youngest of nine children of John Joseph Connors and Margaret Mary O’Neill.  A lifelong New Yorker, he was born on November 10, 1927 at St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan, just blocks from where the family lived on W. 99th Street.  He grew up in a melting pot neighborhood in a tenement apartment building, among families of many Ethnic groups, playing stickball, flying pigeons, swimming across the Hudson River with his pals. He was a graduate of George Washington High School and New York University, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1955.  He served on the destroyer escort USS Naifeh in 1945-46, and the USS New Jersey from 1950 to1952, where he was a fireman, operating 16 inch guns in the waters off Korea. 

His journalistic career began at the New York World Telegram and Sun as a copyboy; he worked the police shack in Brooklyn, and in 1965 joined the NY Daily News, where he worked until his retirement in 1992.   He wrote the daily Wall Street stock market column for many years, and his ability to turn a clever, witty phrase brightened his leads on stories normally dry, informative and based almost entirely on the changing numbers of the market. Colleagues and sources alike looked forward to his daily columns.

He was a member of the Financial Writers of New York, and wrote lyrics for many years for their annual dinner spoofing the financial and political establishment of New York and Washington.  He also belonged to the US Naval Institute and the Senior Club of Sleepy Hollow. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Flynn-Connors, and their three children, Andrew Tait Connors (Erica Quiroz), Kathryn Elizabeth Connors, and Elizabeth Margaret Connors Fogle (Mark), and his grandson, Everett Gerald Connors. He had three children from a first marriage, Jonathan Morris Connors, Jennifer Cass Dillon, and Anthony Barnard Connors, and five more grandsons, Daniel, David, Stephen, Michael and Brian.

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