WHYY’s Nessa Forman dies at 68

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Former WHYY executive Nessa Forman died Saturday night (Sept. 10) of complications from pancreatic cancer at Penn Hospice at Rittenhouse in Philadelphia. She was 68.

She retired in 2007 from the station as vice president of corporate communications and public affairs. She had worked at WHYY since 1983.

“Nessa has managed her illness the way that she managed her life,” Bill Marrazzo, president of WHYY, said in an interview on Sept. 9 with the Philadelphia Inquirer, “always with considerable grace, good humor and fully engaged in a broad palette of current events.”

Marrazzo said that at WHYY, “she set the highest standards for professionalism, loyalty to the principles of public media … and being the best WHYY shopper for clever gifts ever.”

Jonathan Storm, The Inquirer’s television critic, said, “It’s not exaggerating to say she was friends with everybody she dealt with, whether it was a TV critic who regularly assailed WHYY or one of the social [set] who supported it. She was a wonderfully caring and kindhearted person.”

Services will be 10 a.m. Tuesday (Sept. 13), at WHYY, followed at 1 p.m. by burial in Rodef Sholom Cemetery in Egg Harbor Township. Donations may be sent to the Nessa Forman, David Forman, Eleanor and Solomon Forman Family Fund at the Philadelphia Foundation, Suite 1800, 1234 Market St., Philadelphia 19107.

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