Joseph W. Katz

Joseph W. Katz, 91, of Skillman died July 13, 2018. Born in Irvington, he moved to Freehold and, in 1938, Kearny. He later moved from South Orange to Ewing Township to Princeton, where he resided for over 40 years.

For 10 years, Mr. Katz reported for the Newark Evening News, much of the time as a political reporter, before leaving to advise the 1961 gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Richard J. Hughes. He served the Hughes administration as Special Assistant to the Governor, remaining through the governor’s landslide reelection before leaving in 1966 to form the Joseph W. Katz Company, an advocacy and public relations firm in Trenton that he ran for over 25 years.

In a 1992 joint legislative resolution occasioned by his retirement from politics, the N.J. Senate and General Assembly commended his earning “the respect of members of both political parties in the Legislative and Executive branches of government…his knowledge of the most obscure nooks and crannies of the legislative process and the folklore of New Jersey politics, [and] his appreciation of the relationship between politics and farce.”

He graduated from Rutgers University and, with G.I. Bill funding, earned a master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

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He served in the Navy, where he served as a radio technician on ships ferrying World War II troops home from China and Japan.

He is survived by four daughters, Jane (Sam) Katz-Christy of Cambridge, Mass., Carol Katz (Mark) Connelly of Lawrenceville, Mandy Katz (Jonathan Massey) of Bethesda, Md., and Julia Katz (Mark) Schonfeld of Scarsdale, N.Y.; a sister, Rosalyn Bendit of New York City; and 10 grandchildren.

Services were held July 16 with arrangements by Orland’s Ewing Memorial Chapel, Ewing. Memorial contributions may be made to Rutgers University or American Civil Liberties Union.