WESTBURY, N.Y. — Henry V. King, writer of more than 500 New York-based bylined news stories for The Wanderer over a 13-year period, ending in 2001, passed away on March 6, 2014. He was 90.
A Catholic activist, and strongly pro-life, King for nearly 15 years usually picketed outside Long Island abortion mills on Saturday mornings in Hicksville, and in later years, Syosset, N.Y. He was arrested in pro-life demonstrations in New York and Florida.
As an active member of the Immaculate Conception chapter of Catholics United for the Faith during the 1980s and 1990s, King served for four years on its board of directors, and for some years did the organization’s public relations work.
A prolific letter-writer — usually on Catholic subjects — many of his letters were published in The Long Island Catholic, The Tablet, Catholic New York, Newsday, The New York Post, Barron’s, and many others.
Concerning his Wanderer stories, most of which covered the metropolitan New York area during the heyday of John Cardinal O’Connor, King received numerous complimentary notes. These letters came from Cardinal O’Connor, Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua of Philadelphia, Bishop Gilbert Sheldon of Steubenville, Ohio, Bishop Glennon Flavin of Lincoln, Neb., Bishop (later Archbishop) John Donoghue of Charlotte, N.C., Archbishop Nicholas Elko of Pittsburgh (Ruthenian), a number of auxiliary bishops, and many other prelates.
He served in the U.S. Navy for three years during World War II, rising to petty officer, second class. King later graduated from St. John’s University, majoring in English. His first job was as a sales correspondent for Moody’s Investors Service. He later worked as a reporter for the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, then the third biggest moneymaker in the Hearst chain of 19 newspapers. After four years in Pittsburgh, he returned to New York to become assistant editor of the now-defunct New York Thoroughbred.
In Pittsburgh, King met Elizabeth Lane, who was then studying for a master’s degree in library science at Carnegie Tech University. The couple were married in 1951 at St. Michael’s Church in Wheeling, W.Va. They had three daughters: Eleanor Alice, a doctor of chiropractic; Mary Beth, a registered nurse; and Margaret Loretta, a book editor.
When youngest daughter Margaret was ten, Elizabeth returned to library work, becoming an associate professor at C.W. Post College. She died of lung cancer in 1983.
King also worked for the Daily Racing Form. For ten years he was managing editor of Top Trotter Magazine, a New York-area harness racing publication. Afterward, he worked in public relations, first at Yonkers Raceway, then America’s premier trotting track where for five years international racing was featured with pacers and trotters from New Zealand, Australia, France, Italy, Sweden, Germany, and the Soviet Union.
While writing for The Wanderer, King’s high-profile Catholic friends included Dr. Malachi Martin, pro-life attorney John Broderick, Nassau County District Attorney Denis Dillon, Catholics United for the Faith’s Eleanor Tener, the Catholic League’s Dr. William Donohue, sociology professor Dr. Joseph Varacalli, and many learned priests.
The late New York Auxiliary Bishop Austin Vaughan, with whom King was arrested at the Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., abortion site, would say of King on occasion: “Now, there’s a gentleman.”
Dr. Malachi Martin called King “a dear, dear friend whose clear writing style I would know anywhere.”
Author-theologian Msgr. George Graham praised King as “one reporter who gets things straight.”
King was born in 1923 in Jamaica, N.Y. (Queens County). His father, Henry V. King Sr., was turf editor for the New York Sun for three decades and friend and confidant of such well-known thoroughbred horse trainers as Louis Feustel (trainer of Man O’War); Bob Smith (Kentucky Derby winner Cavalcade); and Henry McDaniel (Kentucky Derby winner Exterminator). As a boy, young Henry knew these top trainers, and they knew him.
Besides daughters Eleanor King (Greg) Oldensmith of Island Park, N.Y.; Mary Beth King of Westbury, N.Y.; and Margaret King (Stephen) Fay of Shelter Island, N.Y., he is survived by a brother-in-law, John M. (Elizabeth) Lane, and a sister-in-law, Eleanor Engelmeier of Wheeling, W.Va.; and two cherished grandsons, Derrick Paul Oldensmith of New York City and Thomas Augustus King Fay of Shelter Island.
A Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated on March 10, 2014 at the Bishops’ Chapel, Mount Calvary Cemetery in Wheeling, W.Va., followed by interment with military honors.
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