Gene Picker

Gene Picker may have never scored a touchdown, hit a home run or dunked a basketball but it’s doubtful that any long-time follower of sports in Elizabeth is not familiar with him.

Picker, an Elizabeth resident for 40 years, is best known as the Scholastic Sports Editor of the Elizabeth Daily Journal from 1953 until 1980. In that capacity he covered thousands of high school ports events and selected the popular All-Union County teams in various sports.

He graduated from Weequahic High School in Newark in 1945, one-year after he began working in the sports department of the Newark Star-Ledger. He remained at The Star Ledger through his graduation in 1949 from N.Y.U., where he received a degree in journalism, until he joined the Daily Journal staff in 1953.

Picker has received numerous awards and honors including an award for services to the youth of New Jersey from the AAU of NJ (1969), NKSCA Sportswriter of the Year (1971), the Atlantic City Award for best reporting on the state basketball tournament (1072) and an excellence in journalism award from the New Jersey Sports Writers Association (1975). He was inducted into the Union County Baseball Hall of Dame in 1994.

When The Daily Journal went on strike in 1980, Picker returned to The Star Ledger as an editor with its high school bureau, the Dorf Feature Service, where he is still employed.

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