Sandy Oppenheimer wrote, edited, or published thousands of obituaries during his long career in journalism. He wrote one more obituary before his recent death. That obituary is below.
Sandy (Sanford) Oppenheimer, the former editor of the Bucks County Courier Times and publisher of the Burlington County Times, died Tuesday, May 19, 2026. He was 100 years old.
He was born September 1, 1925, in New York City.
Mr. Oppenheimer was regarded as an editor who always felt he knew what people wanted to read and the papers he worked for as an editor always went up in circulation. However, Sandy would tell you his greatest gift as an editor was finding great people to work with. For many of his reporters it was their first job and they went on to be stars on bigger papers. Sandy had a bookcase filled with books written by those who had worked for him. One reporter went on to write 40 books.
Sandy was a World War II veteran, having served in the Pacific on the USS Salt Lake City, a heavy cruiser that specialized in bombardment. He participated in Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Philippine Invasion and Battle of Leyte Gulf. When the war was over, he was a second-class petty officer and was offered first class to take the ship to Bikini Atoll for atom bomb tests. He turned it down so he could go home and get his civilian life restarted. The two atom bombs sunk some of the target ships but the Salt Lake City remained afloat. The radioactive ship was then towed to a point 90 miles off the coast of San Diego and torpedoed to send it to the bottom.
Sandy was also proud of the military service of his three brothers. The oldest, Jerry, was in the Air Corps before Pearl Harbor. Monroe, a younger brother, was in the Army and the youngest, Norman, was in the Marines. “We did all four branches and we just needed a fifth brother for the Coast Guard,” Sandy used to say.
Sandy’s father, Charles, was a World War I Army veteran but unfortunately died young from pneumonia, leaving the boys’ mother, Lillian, with four small children during a depression. Their indomitable mother started a dress shop in her home and went from there to the Voice of America as a WPA secretary and graduated to the Veterans Administration and retired from Internal Revenue. Meanwhile, the four boys prospered and grew.
When he came home from the war Sandy entered NYU as a business administration major. “I read every book on journalism,” he said, “and I thought this course would round me out.”
Sandy graduated in three years despite being an editor on both the college yearbook and newspaper and working at night at the post office.
His first job after college was back in the South Pacific, in Guam. where he was news editor of the Guam Daily News. “The professors said I would go far,” he joked.
When he came back after an interesting and fruitful 15 months, he answered a help wanted ad in the newspaper industry journal, Editor and Publisher, and landed in Lafayette, La. After a short time, he was promoted to bureau manager in New Iberia, a nearby town. Meanwhile, he was wooing Mary Elizabeth Rives, a Louisiana girl who also worked at the paper. They arranged dates by using the telegraph between the two offices.
Mary was one of seven sisters from Ruston, La. "We didn't have any veterans in our family because we were all girls BUT WE MARRIED THEM," she said.
Sandy and Mary married and headed north, to Wilmington, Del. Sandy was writing sports and a television column. Their two children, Charlene and Randy, were born there. When the paper folded Sandy landed at the Philadelphia Bulletin. However, soon the former editor of the Wilmington paper called and offered him a job as sports editor of a small paper called the Bristol Courier, which eventually became the Bucks County Courier Times.
Sandy had taken finance and accounting in college, because he thought he already knew enough in the journalistic field, as he had daily studied the seven New York City newspapers. He thought he was working his way back to New York City. However, when he reached Bucks County, he knew he could be in New York in an hour, and his children were in schools and an area they liked. So he became an original owner of a Levittown house, in the Blue Ridge section.
Sandy has always been proud that as a member of the paper he went from sports editor to city editor, managing editor and then editor. For many years he penned the “Good Evening” daily column, and, when the paper switched to morning publication, the daily “Good Morning” column, signing it with only his initials. The paper grew from a circulation of 10,000 to 75,000. He also served for several years as publisher of a sister paper, the Burlington County Times.
He also plunged into civic work. He was president of the Levittown Regional Library, chairman of the Lower Bucks Red Cross, president twice of the Levittown Lions, president of the Levittown Exchange Club, president of the USS Salt City Association four times, a director of the YMCA, received the Legion of Honor Award from the Chapel of the Four Chaplains and was a charter member of the Bucks County Roadrunners.
Later in life Sandy also joined the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
On the newspaper front, he was president of the State UPI Association, president of the Philadelphia Society of Journalists, a member of the Philadelphia Sports Writers Association, a committee chairman of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and a committee chairman many times of the Pennsylvania editors’ association.
However, Sandy’s biggest honor may have been when all the newspapers in Pennsylvania joined to form an association to enforce the Sunshine Bill, which led to open government meetings and records. Sandy, a co-founder, was elected president and served many years.
Sandy also helped organize the Levittown International Little League. The first meeting was held in his living room.
In their forties, Sandy and wife Mary became lifetime runners. They first completed the Hawaiian Marathon and then completed the New York Marathon multiple times.
Sandy and Mary did a lot of traveling but their biggest trip was a 98-day round the world cruise.
Mary preceded him in death, on April 3, 2020. Between them, six of Mary's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have the middle name 'Mary' or 'Rives' in honor of her.
Sandy is survived by his daughter Charlene Watts, of Langhorne, a retired teacher, and her husband Jack, along with their two daughters, Lauren, an engineer with GE Vernova, and Carly, an engineer with NASA. He is also survived by his son Randy Oppenheimer, of West Chester, Ohio, a retired communications director, and his wife Cathy, and their two daughters, Elisabeth, an attorney with Bredhoff & Kaiser in Washington, D.C., and Alison, a teacher at North Central High School in Indianapolis. Besides the grandchildren there are now six great-grandchildren.
All are welcome to Sandy's interment with full military honors at Washington Crossing National Cemetery on Friday, June 5, 2026 at 9:30am promptly.
Family arrangements entrusted under the care of Dunn-Givnish Funeral Home, Langhorne, PA.
