Robert Ray Comstock

Robert Ray Comstock, a fixture in the New Jersey press corps from the 1950s through the 1980s who served as Executive Editor of The Record for more than a decade, died Thursday. He was 93.

Comstock also had stints working as the press director for Gov. Brendan Byrne, as an associate professor at Rutgers University, and after leaving journalism, working in public relations.

Comstock died of complications from COVID-19.

Described by one former reporter as running The Record’s newsroom with “an iron fist and a velvet glove,” Comstock oversaw the newspaper in the pre-internet age when print was still king. His tenure at the helm of the paper covered everything from the Iran hostage crisis to President Ronald Reagan being shot to the Challenger space shuttle explosion and the Iran-Contra scandal of the late 1980s.

In North Jersey, one of the most controversial stories of the decade — the Baby M case — occurred on Comstock's watch.

Mary Beth Whitehead was paid to serve as a surrogate mother for Elizabeth and William Stern of Tenafly who were looking to have a child. The case made national headlines and resulted in a custody battle and trial that helped to define surrogacy law. A television movie was eventually made, and several books were written about Baby M.

Comstock also ran the paper during the tenure of former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean. Kean recalled that The Record did not endorse him for governor during his first-term campaign in 1981, but did when he ran for reelection.

"He was a first class guy," Kean said of Comstock on Friday. "He did a tremendous job for the paper and the state. He was not a Republican, so we had some disagreements along the way. But always in friendship.

"You could disagree with him," Kean said. "But you never lost respect for him."

Robert Ray Comstock was born in New York City on Sept. 17, 1927 to Phyllis and Kenneth Comstock.

His mother, Phyllis Taylor, had come to the United States from Australia to tour on the the vaudeville circuit with her sister and parents. Kenneth Comstock was an insurance salesman with Mass Mutual during the depression. Robert Comstock himself had eight policies, his daughter Kate Comstock Davis said.

Comstock's parents met at a Daughters of the British Empire tea, married and moved to Ridgewood, New Jersey, where they built a home in 1930.

Comstock began his newspaper career as a paper boy for The Ridgewood News at around age 10. He graduated from Ridgewood High School in 1945 and then enlisted in the Navy.

"As a boy growing up in a British household, Dad huddled by the radio with family, listening to the dispatches on the blitz in London, and was itching to join the fight," Comstock Davis said. "He enlisted for a kiddie cruise before he even graduated high school, but by the time he actually served the war had ended. 

With his naval service behind him, he returned to New Jersey, attending Rutgers University and majoring in journalism.  A highlight of his senior year was representing Rutgers in the Philip Morris on Broadway CBS radio competition where he was paired with movie star Barbara Stanwyck — even sharing a kiss.

He spent those summers acting and doing press for the Summer Stock in Corning, New York, which gave him the chance to work with other notable stars of the era, including Burt Lahr, Kim Hunter, June Havoc, Zasu Pitts and Jerry Orbach.

Back in Bergen County, he landed a job with the Ridgewood News after meeting a young woman whose father was the managing editor. About a year later, in 1954, he was hired to write for the Bergen Evening Record.

For the next 20 years, Comstock held roles including reporter, political writer, public affairs editor and assistant editor.

"He was the political editor and a damn good one as I recall," said former Record columnist John Cichowski, who penned the Road Warrior column. "He had such insights into how politics worked. Who all the movers and shakers were. He was able to straddle those boundaries between how to present the news objectively, yet still use the solid contacts with these people."

He left The Record in 1975 to take a job with Byrne as his communications director. Moves from media to a government job are not unusual, but Comstock pulled off a less-typical return to journalism in 1977 when he was named Executive Editor of The Record.

"He was very calm and had an even hand," said Mac Borg, who hired Comstock as editor and whose family owned The Record until 2016. "He was really a revered reporter in the state for how he covered state politics. I thought Bob brought the Record up to a different level, a higher level."

After leaving The Record in 1988, he took jobs at Rutgers University as an associate professor and worked in public relations.

Over the course of his career, he was a member of the NJ Public Broadcasting Authority; the NJ Committee for Humanities; the advisory committee on Judicial Conduct of the NJ Supreme Court 1990-1997 and a trustee of the Bergen Museum of Art and Science.

Comstock moved to Westport, Connecticut in 2002 to be near his daughter and grandsons. In 2011, he moved to a continuing care community, where, true to form, he reported for the community's newsletter.

Comstock was predeceased by his wife Barbara Corner Comstock, to whom he was married for 59 years, and sister Doris Auger. He is survived by daughter Kate Comstock Davis; grandsons Alexander Taylor Davis; Benjamin Paul Davis, and Theodore Comstock Davis; his son, Eric Taylor Comstock; and his sister, Margot Comstock Tommervik.

A memorial celebration will be planned for the fall. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the ACLU or Rutgers University Scholarship Fund.

Credit: Daniel Sforza, http://www.northjersey.com

Obituary and photos originally from https://www.northjersey.com/story/obituaries/2021/02/28/covid-19-bob-comstock-longtime-new-jersey-journalist-dies-93/6837205002/

Daniel Sforza is the Executive Editor of The Record and NorthJersey.com. He can be reached at sforza@northjersey.com.

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