About Norm Ledgin
Author Norm Ledgin says he takes “greatest moral pride” in peace and civil rights activism, regardless of blacklisting consequences in the early 1950s. He is listed on page 119 of the U.S. House of Representatives Report No. 378, 82nd Congress, First Session, April 25, 1951, which condemned a “Peace Offensive” by a few hundred “distinguished patriots with whom I’m proud to be forever listed as opposing manufacture, storage, and use of nuclear weapons, either by the U.S. or (what was then) U.S.S.R.” Had Congress instead heeded such cautioning, “we might not be keeping a ‘doomsday clock’,” he adds.
Ledgin is remembered at Rutgers University for another “officially unpopular move”—his 1949 joining of Omega Psi Phi, a predominantly African-American social fraternity. “I joined in hopes of ending the university-sponsored racial and religious profiling for fraternity recruitment that I’d attacked in The Targum,” the campus newspaper he later served as editor-in-chief. “It worked,” he notes, “and Rutgers also eventually restored Paul Robeson to his rightful place as its most distinguished alumnus.”
Born in Passaic, New Jersey, July 15, 1928, he attended schools there and in Clifton, where he edited The Clifton High-Way, the high school’s first newspaper. He graduated in 1946. He received a bachelor of letters degree in journalism at Rutgers in 1950 and a master of arts in political science in 1952. After serving minor daily and weekly newspapers in North Jersey (and being blacklisted from job access by major dailies), he taught journalism at McNeese State College, Lake Charles, LA. A year later he became manager of the Calcasieu Safety Council (1957-62), a branch of the National Safety Council, and led accident prevention efforts in Southwest Louisiana. The Junior Chamber of Commerce acclaimed him as "outstanding young man of the year" in 1962.
Later that year Ledgin accepted a similar post in Kansas City, MO, where he won the National Safety Council Trustees’ award, the Flame of Life, his first year as manager. He founded Kansas City’s Municipal Court Driver Improvement School in 1966, received numerous other national awards, became the nation’s first Certified Safety Council Executive, and chaired the national Defensive Driving Program. He resigned to return to newspaper work as editor-publisher of the Arthur (IL) Graphic-Clarion (1976-77) and was later editor-publisher of The Blue Valley Gazette, Stanley, KS (1980-84).
Ledgin has served on the boards of the National Safety Council, the Missouri Congress of Parents and Teachers, the Kansas City Youth Symphony (chairman and European tour leader, 1968-69), the Kansas Learning Disabilities Association, the Barstow School, Oxford Park Academy, and the Heritage Trust Fund Grant Review Board of Johnson County, KS. In 1974-75 he was chairman of the Johnson County Democratic Central Committee. In 1984-85 he held the elected post of clerk of Oxford Township.
Future Horizons, Inc., Arlington, TX, published Ledgin’s first book, Diagnosing Jefferson, in 2000 and his second, Asperger’s and Self-Esteem, in 2002. He has spoken on autism topics the past few years “from Boise to Biloxi, from Minneapolis-St. Paul to the Southfork Ranch in Dallas, and places between,” often appearing on programs with Dr. Temple Grandin, autistic animal scientist and author, who also contributed a foreword and notes to Ledgin's books.
Ledgin is married to the former Marsha Montague of Wichita, with whom he partnered in weekly newspaper publishing and who illustrated his second book. They have two sons, Alfred, a 2005 graduate of the University of Kansas, and Nicholas, who graduated Blue Valley West High School in 2006. By a previous marriage Ledgin has three children, Stephanie P. Ledgin-Toskos of Alexandria Township, NJ, who is an award-winning music journalist and also a published author; David H. Ledgin of Long Beach, NY, a trial attorney in Mineola; and Allison Dey, a teacher in Tucson, AZ. He has five grandchildren.