A long time ago I lived a lie. It turned out to be a more punishing lie than I had anticipated and the shameful memories have clung to me like leeches. I offer no apologies. The lie turned my life around and I remain convinced, despite the enduring damage to my psyche, that I had no other choice.

For seven years after my graduation from New York University, I tried to obtain a newspaper job -- the only job I had dreamed about since childhood and the only one for which I was trained. Finally, in 1943, I decided to insert a situation-wanted ad in Editor & Publisher.

This was my second try: I had placed an ad shortly after graduation in 1936 -- and had received one response, from a newspaper in Iowa. I was instructed to report to a room in the old Commodore Hotel in Manhattan, where I would be interviewed for a reportorial job.

The interview lasted about an hour. It went well. The interviewer described himself as a one-man Washington bureau for the paper. He told me the editors in Iowa were concerned about a New Yorker adjusting to life in a small western city, but that he envisioned no problems.

Then, rising from his chair, almost as if the interview were over, he said casually:

"Oh, yes, what is your religion?"

"Jewish."

My answer to the question seemed to surprise him. I was fair-haired, fair-skinned, did not speak like a typical New Yorker. Without a word, he walked into the bedroom, closing the door quietly behind him. It took me a minute to catch on. I closed the door to the suite just as quietly behind me.

When I inserted the second Editor & Publisher ad, I fudged the seven years since my graduation as best as I could. This time I received almost sixty responses. The war was at its height, journalists were scarce. I was married, the father of a daughter, a 4-F because of a slight hearing problem. My college journalism credentials made me a desirable prospect, even with the fudging of those seven years, which I'm sure fooled no one.

One of those replies -- sent by the publisher of the Hickory, North Carolina, Daily Record, included a railroad ticket. How shrewd of him! Most of the responses came from small papers a long way from New York City; I could not afford expensive trips without a guarantee of a job. The publisher of the Record said he needed a sports editor in a hurry, and the job was mine.

I had to overcome the vehement opposition of my parents, who were fearful of my leaving the sanctuary of the government position I had finally obtained in 1942. They were convinced I would ruin my life if I gave up the job. I was convinced I would ruin my life if I did not. Once the war was over, I reasoned, and all the newspapermen in service returned to civilian life, I would never get an opportunity to prove I belonged in the field.

So off I went to Hickory, a small town in Catawba County, between Asheville and Charlotte. Hickory was a furniture manufacturing center then, as it still is. As I recall, the Record had a circulation of about 12,000, including country subscribers. The population of the town exceeded the paper's circulation by a few thousand.

The Record was housed in a solid, one-story red-brick building. There were five, maybe six, people at work in the city room when I entered. I was in the newspaper business; I took a deep breath to calm myself.

L. C. Gifford, the publisher, a tall, slender, courtly gentleman, busy in his small office at the rear of the city room, came out to greet me. After introducing me to the staff, he escorted me to his office, sat me down, and closed the door -- the first and last time I saw it closed.

He thanked me for my quick arrival and immediately made me aware that my duties involved more than being a sports editor. I was expected, he said, to write a sports column three days a week, design the sports page six days a week (there was no paper on Sundays), edit and write the headlines on all sports stories, help write news stories and features, and fill in for the news editor in emergencies. Wire service stories were to be used when needed, but emphasis must be on local high school sports. Hickory boasted one small college, Lenoir-Rhyne, which had a naval cadet program, he explained, and a decent sports program. Attention must be paid to the college.

I assured him I could handle it, once I had settled in and made the right contacts. He was pleased; he then suggested I might want to rent a room in a good boarding house within walking distance of the office. He gave me the address and suggested the landlady was waiting for me. I took the hint and rose.

"We begin working at six A.M., go to press at two P.M., lock up shop about three," he said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

I nodded, started to leave. Then I heard almost the same question asked by the man from Iowa seven years earlier, and which had haunted me ever since.

Incidentally, what religion do you follow?"

My hand gripped the door knob. On the long train ride from New York I had thought about this moment. I never had any doubt it would happen. I didn't turn my head -- I probably could never have carried it off if I had looked at him.

"Episcopalian."

I summoned the courage to face him.

"Good," he said smiling. "Declare yourself as soon possible. It will make it easier for you and your wife and child."

Declare yourself? What in the world did it mean? I had never heard the expression before; I would hear it again -- and again.

A week flew by. I adjusted quickly to the routine of being a one-man sports editor and sports department. I found it tremendously exciting. I made a number of innovations to improve the coverage of local events. By the middle of the second week I started contributing news features, which pleased the publisher no end. By the fourth week, acting on a rumor passed on to me by Mr. Gifford, I unearthed substance underneath gossip: the North Carolina football coach was defecting to Cornell, an Ivy League powerhouse. Football being as endemic to the South then as it is today, the story proved to be a major break for the small Hickory Daily Record and I became a minor celebrity.

So when I entered the drug store with the best soda fountain in town and asked for an egg cream, it didn't take long for the pharmacist to figure out who I was.

"That's a New York drink," he said. "I don't know how to make it, but if you tell me how I'll give it a try."

I did and he did. The drink didn't quite make the New York grade, but I congratulated him, and a few days later a large sign appeared in the front window: "New York Egg Cream, 5 cents."

The egg cream story spread, the drink became popular and focused more attention on me, which was not all good. A few days later, sitting at my typewriter trying to finish a story, I felt two strong hands on my shoulders.

"When are you going to declare yourself, son?" The voice was deep, reverberating through the city room. The noise of clattering typewriters ceased. My colleagues awaited my answer.

I twisted my head slightly, caught a glimpse of fleshy jowls and clerical garb. Even a naive Jewish wanderer from Brooklyn could figure it out: an Episcopalian priest who wanted you to declare yourself in his church.

"As soon as my family joins me," I managed to mumble. The hands left my shoulders. He patted my back, walked toward the publisher's office. I resumed writing my story.

I realized at once that living a lie would not be as easy as telling a lie. The arrival of my wife, Elsie, and my daughter, Andrea, within the next week undoubtedly would complicate the situation. I warned Elsie about "declaring yourself," so she was prepared for the question and the lecture on the importance of doing it, delivered by the landlady of the boarding house almost as soon as she arrived.

Elsie shrugged off the incident; I could not. I loved my work, loved small-town life, but I feared that the strain of living a lie -- pretending to be someone I was not, denying my Jewish heritage -- would grow, not diminish. At work, I turned my head constantly, trying to avoid any more surprises.

Sundays, after we settled into our new home, proved to be the best and worst of days. One of our new friends, the manager of the radio station, usually picked us up and took us for a drive with his family. That was good. What was not so good usually occurred on the trip.

Andrea, going on three, always sat on my lap in the auto crowded with two families. Invariably during the ride she would cry out at least once, often twice, "I miss my Granmda Gussie. When is she going to visit me?" When I heard my mother's name, I automatically tightened my arms around Andrea's waist and held my breath. To me, Gussie was the quintessential Jewish name. How could our gentile friends not grasp this? They didn't, but Andrea's repeated cries for her grandmother eventually brought a polite inquiry: Why did she not come down for a visit?

It was easy to put people off by saying a visit was planned in the near future, but I knew I could never permit my parents, with their Russian-Yiddish way of talking, to come to Hickory. I began to understand there was no escaping the consequences of a lie without resorting to another lie, then another, then still another. . .

I had worked in Hickory less than six months, but it was time to move on. I could no longer live under false pretenses, could no longer deny my religion. There was a risk involved in attempting to make a change so quickly, but I was counting on war-time conditions to help me relocate.

I applied to three papers, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Record, and PM in New York. The Post never replied, PM said there were no openings, the Record said that if I was the writer of the headlines on the sample pages included in my application, I should make arrangements to come up for a tryout on the copy desk as soon as possible.

Could it be that I was good enough for a big metropolitan daily after so short a tenure in Hickory?

This time I told Mr. Gifford the truth: personal reasons had forced me to apply for a job up north. I needed a week off for a tryout on The Philadelphia Record copy desk.

His reaction stunned me. It shouldn't have; it was typical of the decency with which he had treated me since my arrival in Hickory.

"All right," he said, "take the week off. I'm so sure you won't like being a copy editor on a big-city daily, I'll pay you for the week and give you money for the train fare. You'll be back, you'll be back."

He was wrong.

I was hired after the first day of my tryout. When a strike killed the Record in 1946 I got a job on the Neward Star-Ledger, where I was a copy editor, head of the copy desk, and news editor. I joint The New York Times in 1952 as a copy editor. After a few years I became editor of the annual financial review, news editor of the international edition and the western edition (when most of the copy was edited in New York and transmitted from there), assistant sports editor, thus finishing my career in the same department in which I had begun it. I retired in 1984.

I mention all these recent glories only to emphasize that, without the lie that has haunted me all these years, I probably would never have managed to break into the newspaper field. I desperately needed a chance to prove myself and the lie gave me the chance.

Not long after my retirement from the Times, I returned to Hickory with my wife. Why? To finally come to peace with myself about the lie? If so, the trip failed to do the job. Maybe sitting in front of my old portable Olympic and putting it all down as best as I can will purge me of my guilt.

I hope so. Even so, my visit to Hickory uncovered a nagging thought long buried inside my memory cells.

Would Mr. Gifford have changed his mind if I had told him at the interview that I was Jewish?

I don't know.

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