Joseph G. Rush
- 11/22/2011


Joseph G. (Joe) Rush, a fifty-year resident of Chatham, N.J., passed away at Winchester Gardens, in Maplewood, on Tuesday, November 22.

Joe, a newsman for a half-century, was news director of the former Newark, N.J. Evening News which closed down in 1972. While at the News, he also covered the Essex County suburbs for the New York Times and during his twenty-five years with the Times, filed approximately 10, 000 obituaries. He thereafter served as editor and city editor, respectively of the Cranford Chronicle and the Elizabeth Daily Journal, both Union County newspapers.

Born July 27, 1916, in Orange, N.J., Joe was the son of Joseph A. Rush, a reporter for the Newark Star-Eagle, and Clarissa Dugan. He graduated from St. Francis Xavier High School in New York City where he won the regimental Gold Medal bugler award in 1934. He received an athletic scholarship to Carteret Academy in Orange and besides playing football, organized the school’s first basketball team.

Joe became a reporter for the Newark Evening News in 1935, at the same time attending Seton Hall College and later Rutgers University Law School. He became a member of the city staff of the News in 1946 and soon was named assistant news editor. In 1967 he became news editor of the paper and later news director.

Upon retiring, Joe, whose first wife, the former Mary Conley, died in 1976, married Patricia O’Hanlon. The next twenty years he spent writing books, one on St. Patrick Church, and another, a history of the Chatham Fish and Game Protective Association, and later FINAL EDITION: MY HALF-CENTURY IN THE WORLD’S SECOND OLDEST PROFESSION.

He was a trustee of St. Patrick Church, Senior Citizen Services, of which he served as a co-president, and Fair Mount Cemetery, all of Chatham.

In addition to his wife, he is leaves two sons, J. Peter of Brewster, MA.; Michael, of New York and Boston; two daughters Mary Ann Hertig of Newport, R.I. and Deborah Rush Cronkite of New York; seven grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.


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