Eugene Secunda and The Adventure

“I’ve always had an attitude–” New Yorker Eugene Secunda says, “–that you must never stop learning new things all the time”. 

Over the past 68 years, Eugene– sometimes just Gene– has had an on-and-off relationship with New York University. Since his 1956 NYU Journalism graduation, he has gotten his Ph.D from the school’s then-new Media, Culture, and Communication department, taught in both the undergraduate and graduate programs at Stern, and become a Gallatin advisor and Steinhardt professor, where he currently teaches “Advertising and Marketing.”

Current MCC students sign up for the class with the expectation of learning the best from the best; studying the industry from a former J. Walter Thompson executive, Broadway and film publicist, and current principal of his own marketing communications consulting firm. 

But undergraduates get more than just an extremely qualified professional for a professor. They get someone with an unlimited supply of life experiences.

And for Eugene Secunda, sharing those experiences with the online world is a new creative outlet. 

Since 2023, he has been posting photos on his public Facebook page of different moments from his nearly 90 years of life.

“At first I was just having fun. I was just posting with certain very famous celebrities, a socialite or an actor, and I’d figure you either knew who they were or you didn’t. That was kind of my fun,” says Secunda. “But as I slowly worked my way through my collection, which is rather large, I began to realize that if people visited my [page] and they didn't experience or were not of my generation, they might not necessarily know who these people were… and that’s when I began to add their names”.

Photography, as an art, has always been a hobby of Gene’s, dating back to his early college days. He explains– “I had studied in the Institute of Photography when I was going to NYU, so I took great pride in my ability to take an interesting picture… I was shooting proms or shooting weddings, and I was just doing a lot of different photographic experiences and I began to develop what I felt was a sort of creative view of what [a] picture should look like”. 

So after starting with celebrities, he began working in photos from his world travels. 

Tallinn, Estonia 2013, Credit: Eugene Secunda

“[Eventually] I realized that I had some shots [from my life] which I was proud of. I didn’t know that anybody else would be proud, or interested… I keep selecting from our travels pictures that I think might be interesting to see. For instance, one of the last pictures I posted was a street scene in Tallinn, Estonia, which not too many people have visited… the architecture was totally different than anything I had ever experienced. I just thought it would be an interesting picture”. 

“So I posted it”.

But a Eugene Secunda photo is more than just a photo, though. “A picture is worth a thousand words” is an expression that seems to have been created just for him. 

Credit: Eugene Secunda

1958. Young Gene is 14 years old, a student at Manhattan’s PS187 K-8 school. This picture is greeted with a hearty laugh. 

“We were going to form a student government… to run for election to be named various things. And I immediately saw this could be a lot of fun,” says Secunda, with the same mischievous grin he must have had as a teenage boy. “I said ‘Well, I’m going to run to be elected the school’s district attorney.’ I didn't have a clear idea of what that was, except [that] there was then a [radio] program that dealt with district attorneys and had a whole theme about the district attorney and how he was always catching the bad guys… so I listened to it very carefully, and picked up a lot of the language that they were using in their introduction. It then became the basis of my speech to promote my candidacy”.

He clarifies, “I obviously wrote my own script! [But] I took a lot of ideas from that [radio] script… [When] my eighth grade teacher saw what I had written, she said, ‘That sounds familiar. Did you write that?’ And I, of course, happily smiled and said, ‘Of course I did,’” he says, laughing even harder.

Secunda looks back on his life very fondly, childhood included. He is the son of major musician Sholom Secunda, an influential figure in New York’s early 20th century 2nd Avenue Yiddish Theatre scene. At no point, though, did his dad’s profession seem to phase him– he reminisces lovingly on his father’s spontaneity and commanding presence. 

“One day, without even discussing it with my mother– who was a dancer he had met in one of his shows– he decided that my older brother and I needed to be exposed to ‘fresh air’ [which] is the way he put it. So he looked for the highest point in Manhattan by altitude, and he discovered Washington Heights, which is, in fact, a few hundred feet higher than the rest of Manhattan… he went up there, and he got an apartment [at] the intersection of 187 Street and Fort Washington Avenue. And that’s when he announced to my mother and the rest of the family that we were moving to Washington Heights”. 

It’s in this apartment that Gene lived until his marriage to his wife Shirley in 1961. He has always been a city kid. So he figured, why ever leave? 

In 1974, he and Shirley moved downtown to Greenwich Village, where they still reside today. “We said, ‘If [the city] is good enough for us, it’s good enough for our kids’”. 

And though his true home has always been New York, it's in places beyond the city where he found himself. 

With little idea about what he really wanted in life, a young Gene set out– backpacking through the Middle East and Europe with eyes full of wonder for all that the world had to offer. 

“My dad gave me a very small typewriter as a gift… in those days, there was no internet [and] no way of communicating on a regular basis. So [my dad] said, ‘I want you to write at least 1000 words a day, and then mail it. About your experiences. Then mail them home, so then at least I’ll know where to start looking for you if you disappear– in the general direction.’ Very pragmatic”.

Credit: Eugene Secunda

1958. Bavarian Alps, Germany. Secunda reaches for his glasses and welcomes this photo with a smile. It is one of the many travel pics that he has shared on his Facebook page.

The shot was taken as he ascended up the country’s tallest mountain– Zugspitze– with a group of strangers who offered to bring him up to the peak with them. The hike from the drop-off tram to the top was snow covered and “windier than hell,” in Eugene’s words. 

Climbing the side of a nine thousand foot mountain takes a certain amount of bravery. And bravery Gene has. 

“I’ve never had a concern with taking risks of any kind. I’d just do things. And maybe that’s stupid in some type[s] of situations”.

“I survived obviously”. It’s this risk-taking attitude that has taken him far in his life. And it's refreshing to hear. 

Eugene Secunda has never shied away from the unknown. From what was unfamiliar to him. 

The landscape of the United States and the world at large has rapidly changed in his lifetime– to put it into perspective: he was 5 years old when World War II began, was one year from finishing his undergrad when Brown v. Board of Education was decided, and aged 57 when the Soviet Union fell. 

He reflects on this idea and is very thoughtful in choosing his words. 

“In the area in which I grew up… I didn’t see any people of color. All Irish, Jewish– from Eastern Europe, usually. And this is what I assumed was the way the whole world was because I had such a limited exposure at that point. When I started becoming a student at NYU, for the first time, I began to realize that there were people of color in the university and [had] more diverse experiences than I had had before”. 

Assuredly, he continues– “And I was always comfortable with these [experiences], it never occurred to me that there was some big difference between people. I wasn’t raised to think that way”.

He carries that perspective with him today. 

So much of who Gene is now came from his early lifetime experiences. And he gives credit to his upbringing– his father especially– for ingraining in him the tools and outlook to learn and grow with the world around him. 

“[It was] the most significant period of my life– when I was immersed in all these different cultures and traveling continuously and meeting new people. And I must say, the reason I am, let’s say, very approachable and [I] enjoy hanging out [with everyone], is that my dad was the ultimate performer. I mean, he was continually smiling and happy and greeting people. And I observed him as a child, and I guess on some level, I said, ‘How does he do that?’ I could never understand. Then, unconsciously, I began emulating his behavior; to a great degree, who I ultimately became was because of my opportunity to observe him in all these years in my early life”.

Now, at 89 going on 90 years of life, he believes that his purpose in this world is to instill this learning-forward, open attitude to young people today.

“When you start the adventure– that’s what I call [life], the adventure– reach for every opportunity to get engaged with people… [even if] they may not feel comfortable with you. You just move on. You just keep going and never allow them to give you an impression that you did something wrong. Because there’s no such thing as wrong in this world…” 

“...you just have to be careful what kind of choices you make”.

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Find Eugene Secunda on Facebook to continue following his adventure: facebook.com/eugene.secunda