Hi Neighbor,
We worked together for four decades. And part of a fifth.
In the ‘70s, Bill was the seasoned reporter (by just a couple of years.) I was the cub. In the early ‘80s, Bill was the city editor. I was the assistant city editor. In the late ‘80s, Bill was associate editor. I was city editor. In the ‘90s, Bill was the managing editor. I was the editor.
Bill retired in 2014. I didn’t.
On Sunday, I will be attending a memorial for Bill. He died Sept. 2.
William A. Huus Jr. – 1947-2025.
He leaves behind a community he served for most of his life. More importantly, he leaves behind a family he cherished.
I never asked Bill if he planned journalism as a career. But either way, he was an exceptional journalist.
Bill started at the Advance a year or two before I did.
He knew Staten Island from shore to shore, and understood the political machinations of our town. He was a pro on zoning and land use issues. It was Bill who reported on, and analyzed, the fiercely-fought-and-eventually-doomed South Richmond plan of the 1970s that would have created a population explosion far bigger than the one we see today. A staggering 450,000 people would be living south of Nelson Avenue, with parts of the bay filled in to build housing to accommodate them.
Bill and I became partners on the City Desk after the passing of City Editor Bob Popp. Bill handled Page 1 news. I handled feature stories and managed the photo assignments. We both managed the staff.
We navigated each day, including weekends, under the watch — some might say wrath — of a somewhat mercurial editor.
“LT” was how he signed his memos, and how he became known. When we griped about LT at the Road House after work, the sports types among us thought we were talking about New York Giants great Lawrence Taylor.
In our world, it was Les Trautmann.
Les was a tough editor. But a very, very good editor. Demanding. Sometimes kind. Sometimes unreasonable. I cannot tell you how many screaming matches Bill and I endured. Well, they weren’t exactly “matches.” Les screamed. We cringed. Usually after he slammed his office door to set the tone.
Les had a habit of getting something in his head that was impossible for us to talk him out of.
One morning, when I was city editor and Bill the associate, Les summoned me into his office. The conversation went like this . . .
LT: “I met a guy last night who’s painting the Verrazzano Bridge.”
Me: “Wow. Great story. Will he talk with us? Can he get a photographer up on the bridge with the painters?”
LT: “Maybe. But the story is that the bridge is blue.”
Me: “Huh? The bridge is gray, Les.”
LT insisted and demanded a story.
“I saw the paint splatters on his jacket,” Les informed me.
I strolled over to Bill’s office.
“Take a deep breath,” I told him. “Les has an exclusive. The Verrazzano is blue.”
After kicking this conundrum around for a while, we decided maybe Les had something. After all, there was a bar over on Castleton Avenue called the Blue & Gray Inn. Maybe they knew something we didn’t.
“Maybe that’s where he met the painter,” I joked.
It took a while, a half-dozen trips to Les’ office to tell him there was no story, and a half-dozen walks back to my desk with orders to keep trying. Finally, the beleaguered reporter we assigned this nightmare finally found a chemical “expert” who said the salt water off the Narrows might have an effect on the paint, giving it a blue hue.
That’s all Bill and I needed.
So if you reach deep into the Advance archives, you’ll find a story speculating that the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is blue. And gray. Maybe. And before you call it fake news, open your mind to the possibilities the next time you drive over the V-N.
Blue-tint sunglasses might help.
Bill was a guy of many talents. Turned out, he was really good at technology. When Bill and I started in the ‘70s, we banged out our stories on manual typewriters. Maybe you’ve heard the phrase “cut and paste” in today’s digital world. When we started, we typed on beige-colored copy paper. If the editor thought we “buried the lead,” he’d just cut the paragraph from wherever it was in the story and paste it on top.
In the mid-‘70s, with technology expanding around us, Bill was tasked with leading us out of the “Stone Age” of manual typewriters and linotype machines, into the infancy of a developing world of computers.
He oversaw major news projects, like coordinating a massive Bicentennial Edition to mark America’s 200th in 1976. He coordinated a history of Staten Island, and the Advance, when the newspaper marked its 100th anniversary in ‘86. He worked with a news team developing a project on the secession movement in the early ‘90s that culminated in a special section every week for months, analyzing the pros and cons of the movement. And he oversaw another massive special section marking the turn of the century in 2000.
Staten Island 2025 might not recognize the legacy of this Staten Island news leader, the impact he had on shaping the future of the Advance and SILive.com. But the people he worked with, the lives he touched through his career, and most of all, his first passion, his family . . . we do.
William A. Huus Jr. – 1947-2025.
Brian