Elaine Margaret Levine, a founding editor and publisher of the Milpitas Post and later a group of community weekly newspapers in the Bay Area between the 1960s and 1970s, died on Nov. 17 at age 91 at her home in the Saratoga hills.
Levine died of congestive heart failure, according to her longtime husband, Mort Levine, who co-founded the Post with Elaine and her sister Mae Schrank. Elaine Levine died peacefully with family members nearby.
Elaine Levine was a community stalwart , Mort said. In 1980 she convinced three others—then-city parks and recreation director Bob McGuire, schools superintendent Leo Murphy, and librarian Ed Cavallini—to help found the Milpitas Historical Society, which is still running today.
“In her professional career, Elaine was at the vanguard for women newspaper executives,” Mort wrote in an obituary. “Her efforts at recruiting and training reporters brought a high level of professionalism to the coverage of local government and education, and the papers were honored with many awards for editorial content.”
The first edition of the Post printed on Feb. 5, 1955, and the Levines ran it as co-editors and publishers until the late 1960s. They held on to the papers until the late 1970s, with Elaine doing a lot of the early hard news reporting.
The pair also started or bought many other recognizable South Bay community papers including the East San Jose Sun, Los Altos Town Crier, Mountain View Sun and Cupertino Courier.
The Levines in the late 1970s sold the papers to a media conglomerate, the Meredith Corporation, but later bought back the Post from the Chicago Tribune Company, Mort Levine said.
The paper was later sold to ANG Newspapers in the 1990s, which was subsequently acquired by the parent company of the Mercury News. The Milpitas Post still publishes each Friday.
Elaine was also an avid gardener and an active member in the California Native Plant Society and the Master Gardeners of Santa Clara County, and she encouraged the local Green Thumbs Garden Club to specialize in creating gardens that were sustainable even in times of drought, Mort said.
Elaine was born on a Wisconsin dairy farm near Campbellsport to Elmer and Esther Schrank on Feb. 3, 1929.
She graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she majored in American institutions. Mort said they met while they were both working on the staff of the campus newspaper. They were married for 70 years.
“It went by in a flash,” he said. “There was never a dull moment. We enjoyed each other, and had a couple of lives that were both focused on the same objective.”
Elaine Levine is survived by her husband and four daughters—Deva Luna and her partner Terra Lee of San Jose, Meg Levine and husband Jeff Hargreaves of Oakland, Kay and Ned Spencer of Conway, MA, and Amy Levine of Forestville, CA—as well as six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Donations in Levine’s name can be made to the Master Gardeners of Santa Clara County or the Milpitas Historical Society c/o the Milpitas Library, 160 S. Main St. Milpitas, CA 95035.