Reporters don’t often become heroes. Women reporters, seldom given opportunities for real news reporting until recent years, have numbered few among the superstars of American journalism. Mary McGrory was one of the rare exceptions to those rules and she died this week. For The Washington Star and The Washington Post she covered the McCarthy hearings, the Kennedy administration, Vietnam, Watergate, the Clinton impeachment and countless other huge stories. The New York Times reports that in 1998:
….when accepting the National Press Club's Fourth Estate Award, Ms. McGrory described her view of a Mary McGrory column. "No great men call me," she said, proudly. "You know who calls me? Losers. I am their mark." She added, "If you want to abolish land mines. If you want to reform campaign spending" or "if you want to save children from abuse, or stupid laws, or thickheaded judges, you have my telephone number.""All the places of little hope, that's my constituency," she said.
Since I found out that I’m having little girls I’ve been trying to think of stories I want them to know about powerful women who did great things. The life of Mary McGrory makes the list.
