Powerful pen

Multiple Choice question: When a February meeting in Washington brought together religious leaders supporting legislation designed to help persecuted Christians abroad, who was honored for his especially influential efforts? (a) William Bennett (b) Gary Bauer (c) Bill Bright (d) Chuck Colson (e) none of the above. | Mindy Belz

The correct answer is (e), because the honoree was a 76-year-old, Jewish but non-religious, former New York Times editor, Abe Rosenthal. Here is his story.

Like others who escaped the Jewish immigrant neighborhoods of the Bronx to take up residence on the Upper East Side, Abe Rosenthal has a bona fide story from the school of hard knocks.

Expect to hear that he suffered severe personal hardship and disappointment before making it through City College of New York and into the newsroom of one of the world's most read daily papers, The New York Times.

Expect to learn that the hard knocks prepared him for hard work, and that the hard work paid off. He made a name for himself as a foreign correspondent in Poland during the turbulent post-war years. He went on to distinguish himself among journalists as managing editor of the Times during the turbulent Vietnam-to-Watergate era.