Steven V. Roberts, author of the warm new memoir “My Father’s Houses,” is best known for his work as a National Public Radio correspondent and New York Times reporter. In 2000, he and his wife, journalist Cokie Roberts, published a well-received book, “From This Day Forward,” that featured their happy marriage despite the fact that he is a Jew and she is a Catholic.
In this solo effort, Roberts writes about his childhood and youth in Bayonne, N.J. Focusing on his family, he begins with his paternal grandfather, Abe Rogow. Abe left Europe for pre-state Israel and then, after returning briefly to Russia (where he married Roberts’ grandmother), he immigrated to America.
Although Rogow was interested in politics and writing, he made his living running carnivals and promoting prize fights. “He was, to put it blunty, a con artist,” says Roberts.
A strong influence on Roberts’ future profession was his father, Will, Abe’s oldest son. Will started a magazine when he was a student at New York University, and later established a publishing business and became a children’s book author.
The experiences of Roberts’ parents and grandparents are lovingly recounted, including a dispute between his parents when his father decided to change their name to Roberts because he felt it would help in his business. In retrospect, Roberts regrets his father’s decision, saying, “I’ve always been proud to be Jewish.”
The narrative affectionately describes the relationship between Roberts’s parents, including some of the letters they exchanged during the four years of their courtship. His parents eventually married and spent the next 16 years living in the house of Dorothy’s parents, where Roberts and his twin brother, Marc, grew up. His fond childhood memories are mingled with recollections of financial difficulties.
Although their home was “totally devoid of religious observance,” Steve and Marc decided to have bar mitzvahs. Their father later attributed the family’s rediscovery of its Jewish identity to this decision.
Roberts’s high school days included writing for the school paper and working for the Bayonne Times, as well as involvement with girls and sports. One of the girls was Doris Frank, younger sister of Barney Frank, then a Harvard student and now a Massachusetts congressman. She introduced Roberts to Frank, who urged Roberts and his brother to apply to Harvard, which they did. Roberts wrote for the Crimson and eventually became a stringer for the New York Times.
He also met and fell in love with Cokie Boggs. What followed, including his year in the Washington bureau of the Times, is briefly described, almost as a prelude to the earlier book written with his wife.
The heartfelt nostalgia in this wistful reminiscence is filled with happy and sad memories. It is sensitive autobiography at its best, ably fulfilling the requirement that a pleasing autobiography should be replete with perceptive introspection.
“My Fathers’ Houses” by Steven V. Roberts. (272 pages, Harper Collins, $23.95).