By MICHAEL SCHENKLER

I started writing for the Trib in the early 70’s — I was the very part-time contest editor. I became the Trib publisher in 1978 and went full time in ‘82. In the mid 80’s I wrote a weekly column, “QUIPS: Queens in Politics.” In 1987 my column was an award winner in the New York Press Association Better Newspaper Contest.

Over the years, I’ve written news articles, humor, contests, commentary, restaurant reviews and just about everything else. I’ve never done a theater review.

Until now.

Although I go to the theater, I’m not a regular. I’m probably not overly qualified to judge a good play from a great one. I am, however, able to share with you a delightful, uplifting evening Lil and I spent last Saturday night.

But the story begins way back in the early 80s after taking over the Trib as it’s full-time publisher. Editor David Oats was about to begin his first of a number of hiatuses with the Trib and I was looking for a driven editor to help me take the Trib into a boroughwide expansion.

A young reporter named Mitch Albom was my choice. Together, we spent Wednesday nights deadlining the Queens Tribune.

In an interview with the Trib, Albom explained how he became a writer for Queens’ largest weekly.

He came to Queens in 1981 after graduating from Brandeis University in Massachusetts – where he first met Morrie Schwartz, a professor in sociology. After settling in at the Fairview Apartments just off the Grand Central Parkway in Forest Hills, Albom found himself looking for work as a musician.

It was a trip to the local grocery store that changed his life and the lives of countless others since.

“One afternoon I was shopping at the supermarket on 108th Street in Forest Hills, and I saw a copy of the Tribune,” Albom explained, adding that he might have put it down had it not been for a small advertisement in the pages of the paper that caught his eye.

“Have spare time?” the ad asked, notifying Albom that the Trib was looking for extra writers.

“I’ll never forget my first assignment,” Albom explained.

“It was covering a community board meeting. I had little journalism experience, but I was so overzealous that I interviewed everyone in the place.

“The next day, I went to get a copy of the paper, and it was on the front page. I think at that point I was hooked,” Albom said about the first time he had ever been paid for his writing.

After three-years at the Tribune, Albom went on to freelance for sports magazines before landing a job as a sportswriter at the Detroit Free Press where he remains after 18 years as their celebrity sports columnist. He has covered just about every major sporting event one can imagine. His work is famous for taking the “unconventional” approach, from writing about the basketball-playing child of a crack addict to following the sled dogs in Alaska during the Iditarod.

He hosts two nationally-syndicated radio talk shows for ABC, covering politics, love, sports and just about everything else, complete with a comprehensive website. Mitch did a stint as a host on MSNBC cable TV and is a regular panelist on ESPN’s “Sports Reporters.” He has a following nationwide.

And Mitch has written a one-hour drama that CBS hopes to broadcast next fall. The proposed series centers on the media war between a newspaper and a TV station.

Dreamworks and producer Gary David Goldberg (“Spin City”, “Family Ties”) are Mitch’s partners and will co-produce the project.

 And Mitch has founded two charities in the metropolitan Detroit area “The Dream Fund” – which enables disadvantaged children to become involved with the arts, and “A Time To Help” – which brings volunteers together once a month to tackle various projects, including staffing shelters, building homes with Habitat for Humanity, and operating meals on wheels programs for the elderly.

Mitch had also penned six books when suddenly his fast-paced career path took a turn after he saw Morrie Schwartz, his favorite professor from Brandeis, on the television news show “Nightline.”

Schwartz was on the show to discuss ALS or “Lou Gehrig’s Disease” — a disease he had.

A disease he was slowly dying from.

The rest is, of course, history and the details are chronicled in Albom’s book.

“Tuesdays With Morrie,” the phenomenal New York Times bestseller, first appeared on that list in October 1997, and remained there for the better part of four years. Oprah Winfrey produced “Tuesdays With Morrie” as a made-for-TV movie which went on to earn four Emmy Awards including “Best Actor” (Jack Lemmon) and “Best Supporting Actor” (Hank Azaria).

With more than five million copies in print, “Tuesdays With Morrie” is also published in 34 countries, in 30 languages, and has been a bestseller in Japan, Australia, Brazil, and England.

The book is one of the best selling non-fiction books in history. For those of you not yet touched by Morrie’s life and Mitch’s words, “Tuesdays with Morrie” tells the heartwarming story of Mitch’s relationship with his college mentor, Morrie Schwartz. After rediscovering Morrie, in the last months of his life, Mitch visited him every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final “class” – lessons in how to live.

The book still stands as a deeply emotional celebration of life while staring death in the eyes. Both Lil and I read it four years ago and were deeply moved and proud to have known Mitch. Neither of us were thrilled with the award-winning made-for-TV movie.

However, when we heard Mitch’s book was now a play, we both agreed it was a must-see.

It was a touching evening. The shows’ only two actors captured Mitch and Morrie beautifully. And the audience spent an hour and a half in Morrie’s den watching the two share Morrie’s wisdom, love and affirmation of life.

It was a beautiful experience.

Share it.

Now at the Minetta Lane Theatre.
Ticketmaster: 1 (800) 755-4000

Stephen McGuire, column contributor

Henry Stern: So Far, We Get Bupkis

It won’t take 1776 words to tell you what the City is likely to receive from the State this year. It will take one word: Bupkis. The word is Yiddish.  Its literal meaning is: goat droppings. Figuratively, it means: nothing of value.

Governor Pataki’s reversion (or regression) to his conservative antecedents should have been expected. What was surprising was the extent of his pirouette to the left during his campaign for re-election. He could not be overly generous because of the impending $8 billion State deficit, created in good part by his campaign trade-offs of State funds for political endorsements. But surely some crumbs remain in the cupboard.

The State of the State message did not provide hard numbers; they are due Jan. 29 when the State budget is to be presented to the Legislature. Although the State fiscal year begins April 1, the budget has not been adopted by that date for many years. The City’s fiscal year starts July 1; the City charter requires the budget to be adopted in June. The Federal fiscal year begins Oct. 1, so each level of government has its own fiscal year, different from the calendar year.

We predict an unusually contentious legislative session in 2003.   Neither (sic) of the ruling triumvirs has much use for the others. In the end, the City will receive some help, painfully bargained for, and far below the mayor’s requests and hopeful predictions.

So far, Mayor Bloomberg has relied on a major real estate tax increase (18.49 percent), already in effect, to help close the City’s $5 billion gap.  Governor Pataki’s rediscovery of frugality will make the mayor’s task substantially more difficult. If the City decides to increase – or impose a surcharge on – the personal income tax (called PIT), that raise, in addition to the real estate tax, would be a modest disincentive for people with money to move in or to stay and pay more. The City has made its own efforts to reduce its budget, including actual layoffs in Sanitation, Education and the School Construction Authority and major reductions in the capital program.    It has eliminated unfilled positions and imposed successive budget cuts on the agencies. But without state and federal help, what we have seen so far are warm-up exercises for the spring encounter with fiscal reality.

This is, of course, not a thorough analysis of Fiscal Crisis III and its causes.  Two previous spastic municipal contractions took place in 1975 (Beame) and 1991 (Dinkins). They tend to bubble over in the middle of a mayor’s sophomore year. Today’s news is that the Governor appears unable or unwilling to provide significant financial assistance.  He may, however, give us the authority to tax ourselves even more heavily. That is some reward for the mayor not crying wolf until Pataki’s re-election was assured. On the other hand, we all know what happened to the boy who did cry wolf.

Moral:  Get your commitments, in public, before the election.

Henry Stern was NYC Parks Commissioner for fifteen years and a councilmember for nine. He is founder and director of NYCivic, a good government group. He can be reached at: www.starquest.nycivic.org.