Aaron Bernard Epstein, an award-winning newspaper journalist who with vigorous skepticism and uncommon zeal pursued truth, impactful reporting, clear writing and the dubious claims of the powerful, died March 11 of debilitating side-effects from immunotherapy. He was 93.
He was born in Brooklyn July 11, 1931, to Rose (Nadler) and Harry Epstein, an immigrant who built a successful car dealership. Harry would have liked his eldest of three sons to go into the business, but Aaron resisted, opting instead for government studies and working on the newspaper at Dartmouth College. Later, while working for the Sacramento Bee, and supporting his wife, Jacqueline Frey, and children, Epstein got his J.D. from the McGeorge College of Law, where he met Kennedy.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Epstein humanized decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, covered legal affairs and the Justice Department, and tackled many other national stories for millions of readers of Knight Ridder, then the second largest newspaper publisher in the U.S. In 1996, he won the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel award for his approach to Supreme Court reporting. He collaborated on a book, “A Year in the Life of the Supreme Court,” which offered rare glimpses of the court’s inner workings and the human consequences from its rulings. His journalism garnered national recognition. He was part of teams at the Philadelphia Inquirer that won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, and at Knight Ridder that won a 1988 Polk Award for coverage of the Iran-Contra affair.
After retirement in 1999, he coached fifth graders at Murch Elementary School in Northwest Washington in critical thinking and running a newspaper, hoping to plant seeds for a future of more informed. Besides Jackie, he leaves behind his daughter, Esther Epstein, son Keith Epstein (Kim Bowley), granddaughters Serena Epstein (Erin Buehler) and Liana (Joey) Scarim; a niece, Samantha Epstein, and nephews Noah and Roger Epstein. Among the charities he supported most passionately: the ACLU, People for the American Way, Feeding America and the News Literacy Project.
