Sheldon Czapnik

Beloved husband, father, grandfather, friend and over-all incredible human being Sheldon Czapnik passed away Tuesday morning, February 21 surrounded by family after a hard-fought battle with pancreatic cancer. Born on December 4, 1947, the first child of two Holocaust survivors, Bernard and Anna Czapnik (née Mass), Sheldon grew up in Harlem, New York. From early on Sheldon carved his own path. While his peers in Yeshiva were busy studying Mishnah and Talmud, Sheldon played hooky, gallivanting through New York City determined to discover his own sentimental and intellectual education. A lover of literature, music, the theater and art, he earned his Master’s in English at NYU and then went on to earn his MBA at Columbia and embarked on an unlikely path in the magazine business back when print journalism was venerated and valued. He worked as an editor at Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and eventually was the Director of Editorial Operations at Time, Inc. and was in charge of the photography department at Time/Life, digitizing the entire Life Magazine photo collection. In 1972, he met the love of his life, Tobie Rabinowitz, while visiting his parents at their bungalow colony in upstate New York. They were happily married and madly in love for 51 years. He supported her and nursed her through brain surgery, three bouts of cancer and one battle with leukemia. He was a loving, proud, devoted father to Dana and Karyn, his two daughters, and was an incredible Grampa to his favorite little boys Aiden and Jamie. An amazing raconteur with the ability to recall lengthy passages of poetry and prose at will, erudite and witty, a lover of puns, passionate about politics and deeply concerned with the human condition, with an incredible breadth of knowledge, Sheldon was a true renaissance man. He was quick to laugh, quick to smile, quick to weep at anything that moved him, quick to offer a big bear hug to the ones he loved. Most of all, he was moral, generous, kind, incredibly loving, communicative and open-hearted. We will miss him forever.

A funeral service for Sheldon will be held Wednesday, February 22, 2023 from 11:00 AM at Floral Park Cemetery, 104 Dean Rhode Hall Road, Monmouth, NJ 08852.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.riversidememorialchapel.com for the Czapnik family.