Gabe Pressman on the beat

Child of immigrant Jews from Eastern Europe, son of the Bronx, product of the public schools and NYU and Columbia, Gabe Pressman worked for a while in the newspaper business before making what was then a lonely leap to an emerging medium called TV news. It was 1956. He proceeded to put cameras and microphones in more faces, with more persistence, than anyone in the history of this great city.

Pressman demanded answers from the powerful, the famous, the infamous, the ordinary. And usually got them.

Never one to gladly suffer foolish press conferences in air conditioned rooms — though he did his share of that — he was our eyes and ears as history happened.

He was there when the Andrea Doria, the Italian oceanliner bound for New York, sank in the waters off Nantucket, killing 46.

He was there for Woodstock, and for the civil rights movement.

He was there when City Hall went begging, and when the Bronx was burning.

He was there when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, and when they did so again.

Mayors O’Dwyer, Impellitteri, Wagner, Lindsay, Beame, Koch, Dinkins, Giuliani, Bloomberg and de Blasio — that’s 10 of them — all got grilled by Pressman.

He didn’t have a slogan or a signoff, and he spent no time in the anchor’s chair. Gabe Pressman, who died Friday at the age of 93, was a journalist, and he was always, always, always there.