American-born Hy Kurzner died in the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital from a heart attack on the 2nd December 2011. He was one of those rare souls who really cared, and that which he cared most about was his family. Most people don’t realise that Hy had an extraordinary life before he came to Norwich.
He graduated from the University of Arkansas with a degree in history and journalism. One of his first jobs was Director of Sports Information for New York University. He then worked as a journalist for American Broadcasting Company covering some of the major stories such as Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon’s election campaigns, Martin Luther King’s death, Pope Paul VI in South America and Racial Strike throughout the USA. He later became Bureau Chief for ABC in Vietnam in the early 1970s.
He met Valerie who was working for the BBC in New York. They married and moved to London. Hy began a career in hospitality and eventually moved to Norwich in 1976 where he owned Hy’s Nightclub, Boswells and Pizza One and Pancake Too.
A former President of Norwich’s Strangers Club. Hy had been an executive member of the East Anglia Tourist Board and Norwich Restaurant Association. Hy founded the Nightclub Liaison Committee, a blueprint for associations between police and the entertainment industry across Britain and responsible for licensing door staff. Frequently people would introduce themselves saying they had met their spouse at the Nightclub or held a celebration in the Pizza or Boswells, that they worked for him or knew someone who did. The thing that pleased him most was when people said they never worried about their children going there because they knew they were safe with Hy Kurzner in charge.
Hy was a New York boy through and through, but he was also Mr Norwich.
Valerie Kurzner
Read the EDP article on Hy here