You think women in journalism have a long way to go when you consider how being young, glamorous, blonde of hair and white of tooth seem to be hiring criteria, and when you learn how sexual harassment of them is more common than seems possible in 2016 (for organizations that make their living exposing secrets, after all). But then you read Mary McGrory’s compelling life story, written by John Norris—a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress—and realize the distance traveled is pretty far after all.
McGrory was from Boston, the first person in her Irish Catholic family to finish college, and she began her newspaper career at the bottom of a very tall ladder. She worked for a time in Boston, as an assistant to the Herald Traveler’s literary editor, but the quality of her writing propelled her to a position as assistant book critic at the Washington Star. The nation’s capital in 1947 was a boomtown, full of change, openness, mobility.
Six years later, Mary’s badgering of Star editor Newby Noyes led him to assign her to write a series of political profiles, and Mary began spending time with the men she’d be writing about for the next half-century, including new Senate minority leader Lyndon Baines Johnson.
The positive reception the profiles received garnered her a plum assignment: covering the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. From there she covered the Eisenhower-Stevenson campaign of 1956, becoming one of the nation’s most respected reporters and colorful commentators on the political scene.
After the Washington Star folded in 1981, the Washington Post snatched her up. She wrote for that paper for twenty-two more years, though the Star was always her first love. She covered multiple Presidential campaigns, the Kennedy presidency was a miracle for Mary, pushing all her loyalty buttons—Boston, her faith, and her admiration of the family. The fates of those brothers were intimately, personally felt.
By contrast, she loathed Richard Nixon: “If he were a horse, I would not buy him.” Her name appeared on his infamous “enemies list.” Regarding the Gore-Bush campaign of 2000, she said the race was a “battle between the unlikeable and the unprepared.”
Although well known for her scorching prose, Mary’s life off the page is also fascinating. It seems she had one or more affairs with prominent politicians and journalists, and LBJ once propositioned her. She was a great party-goer and -giver. Her entire time in Washington, she regularly volunteered at St. Ann’s Infant and Maternity Home—a refuge for young unmarried women—and arranged with Ethel Kennedy for the children to have swimming parties at Hickory Hill, the Robert Kennedy family home in Virginia. She persuaded Hillary Clinton to visit at Christmas in 1995, the year journalist Tim Russert played Santa Claus. These children were the stand-ins for the children Mary, never married, didn’t have.
Indefatigable Mary McGrory, pioneer woman in journalism, astute and opinionated, winner of a Four Freedoms Award and a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, mentor to women journalists, had a stroke at her desk in 2003 and her health—and worse, her powers of speech—never recovered. Her simple tombstone in Antrim, Mass., reads exactly the way she wanted it to: name, dates, and the inscription “Newspaper Woman and Volunteer.”
“Baseball is what we were, and football is what we have become.”
--Mary McGrory ( )

Marvelous journey into journalism of the Kennedy and Nixon year. Wish had known her columns of the time. ( )

These days, it's always the 50th anniversary of that death, the 40th of that album, etc. From out of the past comes the brilliantly clear writing of Mary McGrory, as told to us by John Norris, an excellent biographer. McGrory, whose column was probably read and discussed over family meals and appreciated almost as much as Erma Bombeck, is another voice from our pre-screen world who is no more.

McGrory may be primarily remembered as being one of the most despised member of Nixon's "Enemies List", but she was so, so much more. This fine book covers her career, starting from the Army-McCarthy hearings all the way through to her stroke and forced retirement in 2003. She was friendly with and respected by the mighty and the not-so, and especially by her co-workers at the late Washington Star newspaper, which broke her heart when it was shut down.

Also given a goodly amount of space in this fine book are her romantic entanglements (Gene McCarthy!) and her Boston upbringing, and excerpts from her sly columns: "Newt Gingrich, when faced with a choice of heartlessness or tastelessness, chooses both., and, post Nixon's resignation, when being told that it was not the time for recriminations, Mary asked, "When WOULD be the time?"

She could be scathing, a genius who never published a collection of her columns, which is a great loss to all of us. This thorough and delightful recounting will have to do. ( )