by John Norris
Sidey, Hugh, 55
Sinatra, Frank, 41–42
Sinn Féin, 246
Sirica, John, 154
60 Minutes, 237
Smith, Jean, 93
Smith, Steve, 40
Sorensen, Theodore “Ted,” 72, 114
Soviet Union, 58, 61, 124, 176, 216
Cuba and, 64, 66, 68
nuclear weapons and, 208–9, 215–16
Reagan and, 210, 214, 216
Spencer, Duncan, 45, 165–66, 169
Spivak, Al, 25, 30, 128
Stahl, Lesley, 143
Starr, Kenneth, 260, 262
Stephanopoulos, George, 238–39, 242, 243, 259–60
Stevens, Robert, 3
Stevenson, Adlai, 22, 25–26, 29–30, 33, 39, 40, 45–48, 51, 56, 86, 97, 105, 119, 223, 236
Stout, Richard, 111
Sulzberger, Arthur Ochs, Jr., 260
Supreme Court, 146, 160, 176, 233, 275
Talese, Gay, 263
Taylor, Ben, 258
Taylor, Walter, 139
television, 8, 49–50, 75, 218, 272, 273
cable news, 261
Thomas, Clarence, 233–35
Thomas, Helen, 142, 205
Thomas à Kempis, 184
Three Mile Island accident, 186–87
Time, 82, 123, 186, 216
McGrory profiled in, 35–36
Time Inc., 179–83, 185–86, 192–96, 198
Toll, Tina, 221, 233, 269, 285–86
Tonight Show, The, 119
Travers, Mary, 126
Tripp, Linda, 261
Truman, Bess, 245
Truman, Harry, 27, 78, 244, 245
Tsongas, Paul, 239
United Nations, 56, 283–84
United Press, 18, 36
Vanity Fair, 162, 212
Vietnam War, 79, 84, 85, 95–96, 100, 103–5, 108, 109, 116, 117, 132, 138, 143, 197, 208, 218, 240
Cambodia and, 137, 138
Cronkite and, 113
draft resisters and, 168
Eugene McCarthy and, 96, 101, 105, 108, 116, 133, 147
Humphrey and, 119, 127, 128
Johnson and, 96, 100–102, 105, 107, 113, 119, 128, 280
meeting between Ehrlichman and war protestors, 132–34, 136
meeting between Kissinger and war protestors, 136–37
Nixon and, 110, 132, 133, 135, 137, 143, 162
Pentagon Papers and, 146
protests against, 95, 101–2, 104, 125, 132–34, 136, 137, 208
RFK and, 96, 100–103, 109
Tet Offensive in, 108–9, 110
veterans of, 169
Washington Star and, 138
Volpe, John, 211–12
Walesa, Lech, 228
Wallace, David Foster, 261
Wallace, George, 78
Wall Street Journal, 201
Walsh, Lawrence, 241–42
Walton, William, 76
Warren, Earl, 67
Washington Monthly, 193
Washington Post, 18, 24, 33, 66, 68, 94–95, 116, 166, 176, 178, 180, 182, 192, 196–97, 200–206, 209, 212, 233, 238, 241, 243, 259, 260, 266, 270–72, 276, 282–83, 288–89
Downie as chief editor of, 232–33
lawsuit threatened against, 204–5
McGrory hired at, 200
McGrory presented with Eugene Meyer Award by, 280–81
McGrory’s column on Powell in, 283–85
McGrory’s column on September 11 attacks in, 278–81, 284
McGrory’s first column for, 201
McGrory’s retirement from, 289
Pentagon Papers and, 146
McGrory’s comparison of Star and, 201, 280–81
Watergate and, 149–50, 158, 160, 202
Washington Star, 13–16, 24, 27, 31, 33, 37–38, 62, 66, 68, 69, 71, 93–95, 98, 105, 113–14, 127–28, 130, 131, 135, 138–39, 144, 150, 152, 176, 203, 212, 232, 266, 277, 282
Allbritton’s endorsement of Ford in, 173–75
Allbritton’s ownership of, 164–67, 174, 177–79
Allbritton’s sale of, 179–81
closing of, 193–99, 200, 203, 234
Democratic National Convention and, 127–28
financial difficulties of, 164, 175, 179, 185–86, 192–95
JFK’s assassination and, 72–79
McGrory as book reviewer at, 1, 4, 13, 14, 16, 17, 31
McGrory moved to national desk at, 17
McGrory profiled in, 169
McGrory’s column on, 197–98
McGrory’s comparison of Post and, 201, 280–81
McGrory’s first news coverage in, on McCarthy hearings, 2–7, 17, 158, 159, 234, 271
McGrory’s piece on JFK’s funeral in, 76–79, 159, 168, 264
McGrory’s political profiles in, 16–17
Nixon at owners’ lunches at, 105–6, 141–42
Time’s ownership of, 179–83, 185–86, 192–96, 198
unions and trucking fleet of, 165, 177–79, 185–86
Vietnam and, 138
Watergate and, 154, 155, 158
Watergate, 149–50, 154–55, 158–60, 168, 202, 218, 278
Wayfarer Inn, 84, 113, 271–72, 273
Weber, Tommy, 35–36
Weinberger, Caspar, 64, 222, 241
Welch, Joseph, 3–4, 6–7, 36
Westmoreland, William, 109, 113
White, Theodore H. “Teddy,” 45, 51, 52, 106, 168
White House Correspondents’ Dinner, 232, 262
Whitewater scandal, 248–49, 253, 260
Wiley, Alexander, 16–17
Will, George, 212, 228
Williams, Andy, 123
Williams, Marjorie, 145, 201, 270
Winchell, Walter, 6
Winship, Tom, 22, 33
Witcover, Jules, 84
WJLA, 180
women’s movement, see feminism
Woodcock, Leonard, 155
Woodson, Helen, 216–17
Woodstock, 134
Woodward, Bob, 149–50, 159, 160, 200, 283–84
Wright, Jim, 227, 246
Yarbrough, Chick, 4
Yoder, Ed, 167, 174–75, 178, 180, 198, 199
Zaccaro, John, 214
Ziegler, Ron, 141, 147
Mary, with her father, mother, and brother, John, as a girl in Roslindale. She described her upbringing as equal parts romantic and puritanical.
A comic strip first piqued her interest in being a reporter. Mary as a young girl.
Newly elected as class treasurer, Mary as a college freshman.
On the eve of World War II, Mary’s Emmanuel College yearbook photo.
Newby Noyes sits next to Mary in a staged editorial meeting photo while she was working as a book reviewer at the Star in the early 1950s.
Her parties became the stuff of Washington lore. Mary in 1950, when she was a book reviewer at the Star.
Washington Star staffers sing as Crosby Noyes plays the piano. Mary is second from left.
Joseph Welch, the army’s lead counsel, walks up the steps of the Senate Office Building alongside Mary in 1954. Smitten with her, Welch inscribed the photo: “To the one I love.”
Mary at the Army-McCarthy hearings.
A birthday party for the children from the St. Ann’s orphanage. Mary was militant in enlisting others to also help out with the kids.
On the run near the White House.
Phoning in a story from the campaign trail.
Receiving the Washington Newspaper Guild award in 1959 from editorial cartoonist Herblock.
Mary and her close friend and confidante Liz Acosta outside h
er apartment in the 1950s.
The Star’s promotional photo of Mary as she moved into national syndication early in 1960.
CREDIT: © THE ESTATE OF GARRY WINOGRAND, COURTESY FRAENKEL GALLERY, SAN FRANCISCO
Mary and Eugene McCarthy compare notes on the floor of the 1960 Democratic convention that nominated JFK for president. McCarthy’s impassioned plea on behalf of Adlai Stevenson at the convention thrust him into the national spotlight and badly alienated the Kennedys.
CREDIT: © THE ESTATE OF GARRY WINOGRAND, COURTESY FRAENKEL GALLERY, SAN FRANCISCO
The disastrous summit between Kennedy and Khruschev quickly led to sharply escalating Cold War tensions. Mary looks on as the two leaders meet in Vie
The kids from St. Ann’s with Mary at Bobby and Ethel Kennedy’s home in McLean, Virginia, “Hickory Hill.”
Mary in her apartment in Northwest Washington, D.C.
Mary with columnist Ralph McGill and President Lyndon Johnson at a State Department reception in 1965. Mary was an outspoken critic of LBJ’s Vietnam policy.
LBJ and Mary in his “little office” just off the Oval Office in May 1965. The charm offensive he directed at Mary was equal parts political and romantic.
Bobby Kennedy signed this picture to Mary: “It looks like you are about to kiss me and that is why I look so excited. Love xxoo Bobby.”
Mary enjoys a birthday celebration in her apartment, circa the mid-1960s.
Mary and Blair Clark at a dinner party.
Mary with Bobby Kennedy on his campaign plane in 1968.
Mary and Ethel Kennedy chat, along with Bobby and Jim and Blanche Whittaker, probably during the 1968 Oregon primary.
As Bobby Kennedy once remarked, “Mary is so gentle—until she gets behind a typewriter.”
Mary on a yacht off the coast of Greece with some of the Star’s owners in the early 1970s.
Mary and Nixon when the president visited the Star for a stag luncheon in 1970. Mary’s opinion of Nixon: “If he were a horse, I would not buy him.”
Mary ponders Watergate.
And later holds court among reporters and observers at the hearings.
Robert Redford in Mary’s office when he visited the Star to research his role in All the President’s Men. He inscribed the photo: “Dear Mary, Boy can you draw a crowd—love and thanks.”
Mary at the Star. She likened the pressure of producing columns to staying “one step ahead of the sheriff.”
Mary and her first grandniece, Katie, on the porch of her beloved Maplehurst Inn in Antrim, New Hampshire, 1978.
President Ronald Reagan and Mary have lunch at the Star in August 1981—just days before the paper closed. Mary was no fan of Reagan, but she gave him great credit for visiting the Star in its dying days.
Mary insisted that she hated appearing on television, but she was a regular guest on Meet the Press, hosted by her friend Tim Russert. Lisa Myers is at the center.
President Clinton salutes Mary in 1995 as they board Air Force One after she received the Four Freedoms Award.
Mary’s tombstone in Antrim, inscribed NEWSPAPER WOMAN AND VOLUNTEER.
Acknowledgments
This book would have been impossible without the support, insight, and assistance of a long line of people. First and foremost, my appreciation to my wife, Brenda, for her patience and putting up with me when I would disappear into archives on Saturday afternoons. Thanks also to my children—Ian, Eliza, and Phoebe—for much needed daily doses of inspiration and laughter, and to all of the extended Norris and Bradberry clans for being such good readers.
Special thanks go to Mary’s most immediate surviving family members: Anne and Tom Beatty, Ted McGrory, and Polly McGrory. They have all been fantastically supportive through the long trek of writing this book, from gauzy concept to final product. Getting to know all of them has been a lasting pleasure. Thanks also to Brian McGrory for his considerable assistance and unique insight into Mary as both a person and a journalist.
I also want to single out the small circle of friends whom I rather cruelly subjected to early and very unfinished versions of this book: Mike Petrosillo, Robert Templer, and John Raho. All did me the favor of providing honest feedback, and the text is much better for it as a result. Greg Pollock, Jason Forrester, Matt Berzok, Charles Kenny, and Mark Joyce also deserve many thanks for their long-standing and unflagging support of my efforts to write and tell a compelling story.
I can’t say thank you often enough, or in enough different ways, to Mary’s good friend, John O’Brien, who appeared like an angel to help me find such a fine home for this book at the eleventh hour.
Special thanks also to Gail Ross, my agent, who has been such a good, resolute partner in this endeavor and so supportive of my work.
I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have worked with Wendy Wolf as my editor on this book. Few authors are lucky enough to work with someone doubly blessed with such good nature and such a graceful pen. I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to both Wendy and Kathryn Court for believing in this book and embracing it. Thanks to you both. I also owe special gratitude to the editorial team at Viking for first-rate work in copy editing, fact-checking, and design.
Many thanks also to Susan Glasser and her team at Politico, who did such a nice job in shaping the first article I published on Mary.
I also want to offer special recognition and credit to the scores of Mary’s friends, colleagues, peers, and associates who agreed to be interviewed as part of my research on this book and have wanted it to succeed every step of the way. Getting to talk at length to such a fascinating group of people has been an abiding pleasure. Mary was blessed with a great circle of friends.
I also want to say a special thanks to the staffs at not only the Library of Congress, but the many archives and presidential libraries whose resources I frequently called upon while writing this book. Even when my research requests verged on looking for a needle in a haystack, these professional librarians and archivists were friendly, encouraging, and stubbornly persistent. They are a deeply underappreciated wonder.
Many thanks to my friend and colleague Annie Malknecht for her gracious assistance in wrestling stubborn photos and PDFs into shape. I also want to acknowledge the fine genealogical sleuthing of Brent Bradberry that was so helpful in reconstructing Mary’s roots, and to thank Kai Bird for his initial introduction to Gail Ross.
Lastly, and while realizing I am surely missing others who deserve kudos, I want to thank Mary McGrory—not only for leading a splendid, interesting life, but for launching me on such an intriguing pilgrimage.
Notes
All endnotes citing “Mary McGrory Papers” refer to the Mary McGrory Papers, housed in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress, in Washington, D.C. The 184-box collection was invaluable to my research.
All mentions of “McGrory family correspondence” refer to additional letters, not housed in the Library of Congress collection, to which I was allowed access by Mary’s nephew, Ted McGrory, and her nieces, Anne Beatty and Polly McGrory.
All references to “Clark family papers” pertain to correspondence made available by Blair Clark’s widow, Joanna, for purposes of my research.
All dates given for Mary McGrory’s columns reflect the date they were originally published in the Washington Star or the Washington Post, as reflected in the hard copies of these columns filed with her papers in the Library of Congress collection.
Throughout the text, I interchangeably refer to either the “Washington Star” or the “Washington Evening Star” for ease of use. The paper went through a series of name changes during the period covered by this book, which included, among other iterations, the Washington Star, the Washington Evening Star, and the Washington Star News.
Chapter One: A Boston Girl from Out of the Blue
“Say, Mary, aren’t you”: Mary Mc
Grory, interview by Kathleen Currie, Women in Journalism Oral History Project, Washington Press Club Foundation, August 4, 1991, and July 26, 1992; Winzola McLendon and Scottie Smith, Don’t Quote Me: Washington Newswomen and the Power Society (Boston: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1970), 30–39; “A Writer’s Life,” event of Washington Independent Writers, C-SPAN, Washington, DC, November 21, 1997; Barbara Belford, Brilliant Bylines: A Biographical Anthology of Notable Newspaperwomen in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 270–78; Amelia Young, “Mary McGrory—Washington’s Top Woman Reporter,” Information: The Catholic Church in American Life, January 1961, 12–19; David Von Drehle, “Columnist Illuminated Half-Century of Washington,” Washington Post, April 22, 2004; Duncan Spencer, “A Reporter at Her Primitive Best,” Washington Star, May 6, 1975.
Noyes offered Mary McGrory: Fox Special Report with Brit Hume, Fox News Network, June 16, 1998.
McGrory entered the Senate hearings: Maria Braden, She Said What? Interviews with Women Newspaper Columnists (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 24–34.
Suddenly a friendly face: Maureen Dowd, “A Star Columnist,” New York Times, December 26, 2004 (correction appended); Maureen Dowd, Are Men Necessary? (New York: Berkley Books, 2005), 130–34.
