[1] Educated at New Utrecht High School, Brooklyn, and Columbia University, he covered the Spanish Civil War from 1937 to 1939 as a foreign correspondent and served in the US Army Signal Corps from 1942-1945 as a Technical-Sergeant.
His second marriage to Bernice Coe (1950) lasted more than fifty years, until her death in 2001.
His subjects include scientist Galileo, abolitionist John Brown, and labor leader Joe Hill.
His play, Lamp at Midnight, about Galileo's struggle with the Catholic Church to get his ideas accepted, was performed and televised on the Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1966.
[3] Stavis was actively working until his death on February 2, 2007, at the age of 100.