Between the two of them, Ralph and Deborah Blumenthal have written about everything from the bombing of the World Trade Center to the toxicity of beauty products.

Parents of University of Delaware junior Anna Blumenthal, AS 2001, Ralph and Deborah are New York City natives with a passion for investigative reporting. As reporters, book authors and literary sleuths, they are always seeking an interesting or obscure story to tell. “Everything is copy,” Deborah says, referring to interests, hobbies and travels that often lead to stories. “We both have short attention spans, so we do a lot of different things.”

Currently, Ralph is a reporter for the arts section of The New York Times, though he has spent most of his career there as an investigative reporter. Since joining the Times as a copy boy and then serving as a city news reporter, he has found himself in the midst of some of the most exciting events in recent history. He was sent on tours of Germany, Vietnam and Cambodia in the late 1960s and early ’70s and spent 20 years investigating the activities of the Mafia, organized crime and Nazi war criminals. Some stories have taken months to prepare.

“When you’re writing about money laundering in the Russian Mafia, you don’t want to be wrong,” he explains.

Ralph headed the investigative team that covered the bombing of the World Trade Center, which earned The New York Times the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting. He also investigated the discovery of the bones of Nazi war criminal Joseph Mengele, known as “The Angel of Death” for the gruesome human experiments he conducted on Jews at Auschwitz. “I went down to Brazil in 1985 to investigate that story, and we were able to confirm that he, in fact, was dead and the worldwide manhunt was over,” Ralph notes.

In addition to his well-known work for The New York Times, Ralph also has written several books about true-life events. Last Days of the Sicilians—the “pizza connection” story about the FBI’s biggest drug case—features New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and FBI Director Louis Freeh at a time when they were ambitious, young prosecutors. Outrage, published in 1990, and co-written with five other Times reporters, is the story of Tawana Brawley, a young black girl who falsely claimed that she’d been raped by white attackers. Once Through the Heart, published in 1992, is the tale of a New York City police detective who comes face to face with his own daughter selling drugs on the street. And, Stork Club, due to hit bookstores next spring, is the story of New York City’s most famous nightclub during the gangster and nightclub eras of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.

Although most of his work has focused on criminal and tragic events, Ralph cites his comic endeavors when asked about all-time favorites. He is particularly fond of the story about the San Francisco hotel room without a bed. “I was on a book tour and was dead tired, but I couldn’t find the bed. Here I was, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, and I couldn’t find the bed in my hotel room,” he recalls. Seeing the humor in his experience with a bedless business suite, Ralph wrote a story that ended up receiving rave reviews.

“I like to keep an eye out for the humor in life. It is sometimes hard with all the tragedy you see. But, despite all the seriousness at The New York Times, it is full of zany happenings,” he notes. “The process of getting a story into the paper can be circuitous and full of mishaps. You wonder how it ever came to be.”

Having studied painting, sculpture and design as an art major at City College of New York when he was a young man, Ralph asked The New York Times for a change to the culture department in 1994. He was granted his wish and, today, focuses on topics such as opera, theatre and music, not as a critic, but as a news reporter. In fact, Ralph still applies his investigative skills to the job, finding controversy and intrigue in culture news. “I recently found out that Louis Armstrong had made secret voice recordings with friends, which are archived at Queens College. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to the tapes and writing about the unknown Louis Armstrong,” he says. “I also found this cult surrounding Mario Lanza, who died in the 1950s. Many consider him to be the greatest singer of all time. His memory is kept alive by certain singers and fans, and I looked into that whole phenomenon.”

Deborah, meanwhile, spends her time investigating topics of beauty and health. A licensed and registered dietitian, she started out writing for The New York Times’ Sunday Magazine and today covers “beauty with a scientific slant” for the New York Daily News. She has investigated the effects of various beauty products on the skin and recently wrote about a new strain of head lice that is resistant to traditional treatments.

Though she now focuses more on health than beauty, she authored the New York Book of Beauty, a guidebook to the Big Apple’s best beauty resources, published in 1995. “I basically toured all the beauty emporiums, trying their products,” she says. “There is a difference between evaluating a massage and lying there like a lump enjoying it. I did enjoy it, though.”

Her most recent passion, however, is writing children’s books. After her youngest daughter, Sophie, had a temper tantrum in the park one day because she was denied a cookie, Deborah wrote The Chocolate-Covered Cookie Tantrum. “I came home after she had this explosive tantrum and I was bewildered. The pediatrician said it was normal, so I sat down and started playing with the idea,” she explains. “I came up with a story that takes child and parent through a tantrum, including all of the foot-banging and hair-pulling. When I read it to schoolchildren, it helps them learn how to handle their own tantrums.”

Sophie, now in the fourth grade, is well past her tantrums, leaving Deborah to find a new topic for children—putting together a family tree. A picture book on that topic will be published in 2001.

In the meantime, the Blumenthals will continue to share their love of discovery. “Every story is potentially an investigative story, if you go deep into it,” says Ralph. “It’s a matter of looking for things that are worth delving into.”

-Sharon Huss Roat, AS '87