Bedford journalist Mike Rosenberg mourned by group

Native Information

“We are going to really miss Mike’s willpower, enthusiasm, and dedication in writing concerning the big selection of tales to assist maintain the folks of Bedford knowledgeable.”

A longtime native journalist and lively member of the Bedford group died Monday night time throughout his protection of a basketball recreation on the native highschool.

Mike Rosenberg, who turned the primary group reporter for the Bedford Citizen when the information web site was based in 2012, went to cowl the ladies’ basketball playoff recreation at Bedford Excessive Faculty. At halftime, a passerby seen Rosenberg was unconscious within the hallway. He was transported to Lahey Hospital, the place he was pronounced lifeless at 75, in response to his Bedford Citizen obituary.

“We are going to really miss Mike’s willpower, enthusiasm, and dedication in writing concerning the big selection of tales to assist maintain the folks of Bedford knowledgeable,” the obituary learn.

Rosenberg leaves behind his spouse, Daybreak, and his two daughters, Rebecca and Sarah.

Rosenberg began writing for the Bedford Minuteman in 1973 as a freelancer and ultimately turned an editor. Subsequently, he turned an editor on the Lexington Minuteman and the Lowell Solar.

Wayne Braverman, the managing editor for the Citizen who wrote Rosenberg’s obituary, has recognized Rosenberg since engaged on the Bedford Minuteman within the ’70s. 

Braverman got here to the Minuteman as an assistant sports activities editor proper after receiving his grasp’s diploma from Boston College. In the future, his editor left for trip for 2 weeks and Braverman had to determine the right way to prepare the sports activities part on the bodily newspaper.

Rosenberg, an editor for the Minuteman, took the time to show Braverman the right way to do the work and answered all his questions.

“I realized a complete lot from him on that and I used to be at all times grateful for him for doing that,” Braverman stated. “We turned mates, and I’ve been involved with him for all these years.”

After his time on the Lowell Solar, Rosenberg took a non-academic place at Maimonides Faculty in Brookline however nonetheless stored up a sports activities column for over 30 years, in response to the obituary. He moreover served three phrases on the Bedford Faculty Committee, 4 phrases on the Choose Board, and was obsessed with Little League teaching.

“I’ve by no means been extra flooded with emails, textual content messages, and our websites … are loaded with feedback and emotional issues about Mike on there,” Braverman stated. “When an individual has feedback and is remembered from folks a long time in the past from all walks of life, that, to me, says they have been significant.”

Over 40 feedback have been left underneath the Citizen obituary by individuals who shared their tales about how they met Rosenberg and the impression he had on them.

“I had the privilege of working alongside him by way of Bedford Embraces Variety, and I shortly got here to understand not solely his ardour for the group but in addition his kindness, humility, and constructive spirit,” commenter Nibha Jolly wrote. “Mike was a person who impressed others together with his never-give-up angle and his skill to raise folks up.”

Alongside his obituary, the Bedford Police Division gave a assertion about how a lot of a “fixture” he was on the division and in the neighborhood, and a visitor column from Susan Abramson, a rabbi on the Temple Shalom Emeth in Burlington, referred to as Rosenberg a “true mensch.”

“He was a loyal Jew who knew far more about Jewish custom, Torah and texts than I ever will,” Abramson wrote. “He was like a strolling encyclopedia, not simply of Judaism, however of the world typically. And he used his huge information to quietly impart knowledge to anybody who requested for it, myself included, on many events.”

Braverman stated that, at occasions, working at a newspaper can carry on its frustrations, however there was additionally “a whole lot of comedy.” Rosenberg was an “aficianado” of the works of the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, and Monty Python. As an enormous sports activities fan, he would additionally give his unfiltered opinion of the Crimson Sox after a foul recreation.

Rosenberg beloved being a reporter and was very dedicated to it, Braverman stated. He would at all times have copies of tales and press releases in his fingers, even on Thursday and Friday afternoons when the workers went out for lunch.

“Generally he’d have a fork in a single hand, pen within the different hand, marking stuff up,” Braverman stated.

After receiving so many feedback and emails, Braverman stated he realized so much about Rosenberg he didn’t know earlier than. It was a testomony to how many individuals’s lives he crossed and the way a lot of an impression he made on them.

“When any person goes, it does harm,” Braverman stated. “I attempt to put myself within the place of appreciating who they have been, what they did and what they meant, the present that they gave me to assist make me a greater individual.”