Lewis Zelig Koch, age 87

Lewis Zelig Koch, age 87, beloved husband of Joanne nee Schapiro, loving father of Lisa (Michael Kornick), Rachel (Daniel Ernst) Koch and Joshua (Jane Boegel) Koch, proud grandfather of Zachary, Sophie, Ann, Matthew, Samantha, Rose and Olivier, dear brother of Michael (Marilyn) Koch

Lewis Z. Koch was born on August 11, 1935, to Sidney and Blanche Koch. Lewis began writing freelance articles and book reviews before signing on with Chicago’s renowned cooperated press agency City News Bureau, where Koch was proud to follow graduates like Seymour Hersh and Mike Royko, the beloved columnist, with whom Lew was close.

In 1963, he fast-talked his way into a party for his hero Nelson Algren, persuading an inexperienced junior publicist at the University of Chicago Press that he had mistakenly been left off the guest list. At the party, he set eyes on the publicist, née Joanne Shapiro, and fell in love at first sight, a story he loved to tell again and again. They were married the next year, after a romantic proposal on a helicopter ride around Chicago. Their first child, Lisa, was born in 1965. Rachel came two and a half years later, then a son, Josh, in 1969.

Koch had by then moved to NBC News’s Chicago office. He covered radical politics in 1968, including the violence at the Democratic National Convention. Later, he was the first to report the death of Black Panther chairman Fred Hampton as a murder rather than the result of a mutual shoot-out with police.

His career became quieter as a new decade dawned, hired by the Tribune with his wife Joanne to write a new kind of column, trading off as the authorial voice week to week, in jointly crafted columns on the challenges of raising a family that honored the post-1960s spirit of equality. What emerged was an extraordinary body of writing helping millions find solid ground amid the shifting sands of gender roles, sexual norms, and family arrangements, of the frustrating give-and-take of marriage as much as its transcendent joy.

The column, “Family Lib,” syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association to 200 papers across the country. In one column, Lew narrated how he demanded to be present in the delivery room when his son was born—a novel proposition at the time. “I hope, when the time comes, my son Josh will ask me if he should watch the birth of his child,” he wrote. “I would take such pleasure in describing how I watched his birth. I would tell him it was the most exhilarating, the most awesome experience I had ever had.”

By the time Joshua Koch had his own children, admitting fathers into delivery rooms had become routine. His own father had lit the way.

The writing team of Joanne and Lew Koch went on to co-author “The Marriage Savers” in 1976, a college sociology textbook, “Marriage and the Family,” and the six “Parents In-Touch” books, a million of which were distributed by the State of Illinois in 1990.

Lewis Zelig Koch died on Saturday, December 3, 2022.

Service Tuesday 12 Noon at Chicago Jewish Funerals, 8851 Skokie Blvd. (at Niles Center Road) Skokie. Interment Shalom. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to Southern Poverty Law Center, 400 Washington Avenue Montgomery, AL 36104, www.splcenter.org or ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York NY 10004 www.aclu.org. To attend the funeral live stream, please visit our website. Arrangements by Chicago Jewish Funerals - Skokie Chapel, 847.229.8822, www.cjfinfo.com