by John Norris
Mary hung bars of Irish Spring soap from tree branches to deter deer. When she read that coyote urine repelled squirrels, she reasoned that an even more dominant predator would prove an even more powerful deterrent and enlisted National Security Adviser Anthony Lake to see if he could procure lion dung from the nearby National Zoo. Lake reported that since lions were on the endangered species list, it was against the law to remove their excrement.
“She had her scraggly little garden crumbling off a cliff into Rock Creek Park that only a Roslindale girl could love—with its mismatched collection of plantings and bars of soap hanging from trees for reasons that I could never understand,” her cousin Brian McGrory recalled. “Yet, she looked at that patch of earth like the queen looks at the grounds of Buckingham Palace.” The garden might not have been much, but for readers it was a welcoming place. “For us, there is always tomorrow,” Mary comforted her fellow gardeners.
Mary had initially welcomed Gerald Ford’s rise to the presidency as a breath of fresh air. Ford was jovial, collegial, and not consumed by the towering insecurities that had undermined Nixon and Johnson. That all changed for Mary when Ford pardoned Nixon, on September 8, 1974. Her response to what she called “a moral Pearl Harbor” was scathing.
Yet Mary substantially changed her view of Ford and the pardon over time and eventually printed a heartfelt mea culpa to Ford in 2001. “What seemed then to be cynicism now looks more like courage,” she wrote. Ford wrote to Mary in response, “I understand your position in September 1974, although I obviously disagreed. I am very honored with your viewpoint in 2001 . . . our longstanding friendship has been wonderful.”
Major change came to Washington with Nixon’s departure, and a major shake-up soon hit the Star as well. The paper was facing mounting financial difficulties, losing more than $8 million in 1974 alone. The Star’s owning families began to court outside investors.
The paper soon found itself with an unlikely suitor: Joe Allbritton. Allbritton, a pint-sized Texan and self-made millionaire, had grown up in a hardscrabble background, with his father running a general store in a small Mississippi lumber town. After getting a law degree, Allbritton pushed into banking and insurance, before opening up a chain of successful mortuaries on the way to amassing his fortune. Having made his millions, he pursued more refined tastes, collecting racehorses and fine art.
Allbritton decided that he wanted to get into the newspaper business and made an initial investment of $5 million in the Star. When the Star continued to struggle, the owning families went back to him, hoping for another injection of cash. Allbritton offered to buy the paper outright. He knew almost nothing about the newspaper business, but he knew that owning the Star would give him an important entrée into Washington.
Mary thought that the fundamental foreignness of journalism was a big part of the allure for Allbritton. “He had made his money in mortuaries and banks, and he was just drawn to newspapers because he figured people with a fraction, a not even calculable fraction, of his income, were having much more fun than he was,” she said. Allbritton also thought buying the Star made good business sense, because a local television studio was included in the purchase.
Mary had an unusually close relationship with Allbritton, and she made it her personal mission to woo him to the aid of the Star. In April 1974, she attended the annual Gridiron Club press dinner with Allbritton as talks between him and the owning families bogged down. Mary was at Allbritton’s side all night long. The two of them sang “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” together.
Shortly after the dinner, Allbritton wrote to Mary: “The Gridiron dinner on Saturday last was not climaxed by Newby Noyes’ magnificent performance, but the crescendo was our duet streaking through the men’s dressing room to the sanitary facilities. I enjoyed meeting you so very much that I am going to a wee bit of difficulty so that I may perhaps have the opportunity of seeing you again and ‘with a little bit of luck’ it may come about. Now wouldn’t that ‘be loverly’?” Allbritton and the owners had resumed negotiations the day after the Gridiron.
Negotiations made progress until the owning families made an agreement with one of the Star’s unions when the sale was nearly complete. It was a reasonable deal, but Allbritton had explicitly warned against any new union contracts before the sale. Allbritton “went up like Mount Etna, which was, I might say, his custom,” Mary recalled. She was alarmed that the entire deal might collapse and leave the Star bankrupt. She wrote to Allbritton: “Dear Joe, say it ain’t so. Yours sincerely, Mary McGrory.”
The next day, Mary was in her office, working on her column, when a delivery boy approached her desk, carrying fifty yellow roses. The card read, “It ain’t so, Joe.”
Mary proudly displayed the flowers on her cramped desk. As the afternoon wore on, people from all over the newspaper stuck their heads into her office to see them.
Eventually the owning families who had run the Star for more than a century agreed to sell for $35 million. Newby Noyes, who had meant so much to Mary as a mentor and a friend, retired to Sorrento, Maine. It was a bittersweet moment for Mary. She had helped convince Allbritton to buy the Star, but in doing so she closed an important chapter in her life.
Allbritton rapidly introduced austerity measures, cutting two hundred positions and instituting a salary freeze. “In 1974, when the angel of death hovered close, we were faced with a choice, take a 20 percent pay cut—euphemistically called a ‘four-day week’—or let it die,” Mary recalled. “I remember that black day in December. Young faces, with little children and big mortgages, came to my door.” Mary helped convince her fellow staffers that there was no alternative.
But for all the financial peril, there was also a sense of renewed optimism at the paper. Allbritton “crashed into town like a tiny thunderbolt,” said reporter Duncan Spencer. “He brought a new fresh spirit. He didn’t come to be a loser.” Mary was grateful to Allbritton. “Mary was really very excited and welcoming,” Jack Germond said, “because it was a sign of somebody who wanted to get on board the sinking ship.”
The Star enjoyed a remarkable infusion of new talent despite the hardships. Allbritton tapped Jim Bellows as the paper’s editor in January 1975, an unusually savvy choice. Bellows lived and breathed news and had earned a reputation as a newspaper impresario, innovator, and oddball. He was a writer’s editor, and his vision of where the newspaper business was headed was decades ahead of its time.
Bellows had a fantastic eye for good reporters, and reporters wanted to work with him because he was a free spirit and a very good editor. He hated the stuffy, moribund style of most papers and wanted copy that read like a daily magazine, rich with personality, color, and flair. Bellows knew that newspapers needed a dramatic remake if they wanted to compete with television. He was brash and willing to fail. He was an idea-a-minute guy, and while some of his plans were gimmicky, others were revolutionary.
Bellows knew that the Star needed hype and buzz to take on the richer and better-resourced Washington Post. He soon established a wildly successful gossip column, written by Diana McLellan, called the Ear, which regularly skewered Ben Bradlee and his eventual second wife, Sally Quinn, dubbing them the “fun couple.” Under Bellows, the entire Star staff referred to the Post as the “O.P.”—the other paper. Bradlee once made a request from the Star to reprint an article contingent upon Bellows’s agreeing not to mention his name in the column for an entire month. (Bellows agreed, but made sure there was a piece on Bradlee the day after the agreement expired.)
Bellows made important editorial changes at the paper, and morale revived. He brought computers into the newsroom for the first time. Mary so resisted technology that eventually she had to be ordered to use a computer. “Oh, she was offended!” Jack Germond recalled. The Star was now Washington’s upstart.
Bellows was legendary for his cryptic interpersonal style, and one profile observed that he communicated “with hand signals,
nonsense syllabic jabbering in crumbling, mumbled sentences.” Mary recalled Bellows telling her how he wanted her to write by mimicking a boat tossing on the waves. “I don’t know what that means,” she said. But Mary and Bellows were a happy fit. He loved vibrant writing; she provided it in spades.
Ed Yoder, a well-regarded editor and columnist, also joined the Star under Bellows. When Yoder came aboard, Bellows made clear that two things would stay under his direct editorial control: Mary’s column and Pat Oliphant’s editorial cartoon.
“I have a rather vivid memory of my first encounter with Mary,” Yoder shared. “She came into my office one day, the first week I was in Washington. She mumbled something about coming to a dinner at her house for Mr. Somebody. I didn’t catch the name. My family was still in Greensboro, and I was still commuting on the weekends, so I welcomed the opportunity to go to somebody’s house. It turned out to be a lasagna party for Robert Redford,” who was in town researching his role in All the President’s Men. Later, Redford fondly remembered how proud Mary had been to share her hate mail with him when he visited her at the paper.
In May 1975, Mary put her own stamp on the Star’s revival when she received a cable from William McGill, president of Columbia University: “You were awarded Pulitzer Prize for Commentary today. Congratulations.” She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer for commentary. Mary was thrilled, and the fact that she had won for her coverage of Watergate only made the victory sweeter.
Mary informed Allbritton, and he called it the brightest day since he had purchased the paper. She made only one demand of him when they spoke on the phone: “If we do anything, can we do it for everybody?” Allbritton ordered cases of Moët & Chandon champagne and more yellow roses to be delivered to the newsroom.
As soon as the champagne was uncorked, Mary hand-delivered a glass to Clarence, the security guard who had insisted on escorting her to her car nightly during the Watergate hearings. Mary was not one for false modesty when it came to journalism’s highest award. “Who wants the Pulitzer Prize? The answer is that I do,” Mary said. “I don’t care if it drinks or beats its wife—I wanted it.”
Mary smoked Marlboros, sipped champagne, ate cake, and held court in the newsroom, thanking everyone from Clarence to Allbritton. The Italian ambassador sent his chauffeur around with a bottle of champagne, and when the editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tried to call Mary, he was told by the operator, “She’s getting an award, and I think they are having a party.”
Mary received an outpouring of congratulatory letters and cables. “First the enemies list and now the Pulitzer Prize,” joked Art Buchwald. “Have you no shame?”
Jacqueline Onassis wrote, “You should win it every year.”
Anchorman Tom Brokaw deserved high marks for creativity. “I was deep in the Yucatan when a small boy on a burro came through the jungle, shouting something in Spanish,” he wrote. “The villagers cheered and began a three-day celebration with much drinking, dancing, and singing. Naturally, I joined in, participating to the point of exhaustion. As I was preparing to drag my limp body back to civilization I asked, ‘What news did that small boy bring that inspired such joy?’ and the village priest answered, ‘Didn’t you know? Mary McGrory won the Pulitzer.’ Smiling wearily, I replied, ‘Huzzah!’ I return to Washington with fresh hope.”
“As you know—I love you,” author Teddy White shared. “And I hate the Pulitzer Prize people. The Pulitzer Prize should have been awarded to you at least as early as 1954; if not then, in 1960 and 1961; and then for the lead on the Kennedy funeral story in 1963; and then again, in any year from 1965 to 1970; and again in 1973–74. By my count there are four Pulitzer Prizes due to you.”
President Ford personally congratulated Mary at a press conference, although in exchange he got a tough question about whether or not he would grant amnesty to Vietnam draft resisters. (To Mary’s credit, even though she adamantly opposed the war, she also became one of the most important national champions of efforts to assist Vietnam veterans.)
Even Scotty Reston, the man who had once made a job offer contingent upon her answering the phones, weighed in with praise. “If you could have heard the comments of your colleagues on the Pulitzer jury and the board about your work, you would have felt that it was all worthwhile. Not only was the vote unanimous, even against so formidable a candidate as Russ Baker, but the emphasis was put, not mainly on last year’s reporting but for the whole body of your writing on the Star.”
The award triggered a spate of profiles on Mary by outlets like the New York Post and Ms. magazine, the best of which was written by her colleague Duncan Spencer at the Star:
Into the newsroom of the Star, a place as romantic as a parking garage, as evocative as a hospital waiting room, marches Miss Mary McGrory, quick step. Mary is usually in tatters after a day on Capitol Hill. Her brow is furrowed with thought, her jaw working on a wad of gum, her hands shaking for a sit-down cigarette—her hands have been bothering her hair. But the step is quick and athletic, her legs carry her along a familiar route to a familiar corner. Her steps have taken her past sleepy building guards, into a metal box of an elevator that stinks of sour roto ink, along a tiled corridor as lonely and nameless as an empty mineshaft, to the lighted, noisy newsroom, the place of her struggle. . . . She will come out, agitated and tense, asking for a cigarette. Nothing ever seems to diminish the number of false starts or the quivering of hands, or the effort. By these rigorous means, she produces a prodigy of copy.
Mary reflected on the rigors of producing her column. “I think about it constantly, because there’s never a moment when you can rest. I’m always one step ahead of the sheriff.”
Her dedication to the St. Ann’s orphanage remained constant. While St. Ann’s had been populated by kids from lower-middle-class white families when Mary arrived in Washington, by the 1970s, when St. Ann’s relocated to a low-slung brick building in nearby Hyattsville, Maryland, it largely served black kids from the slums of D.C.
Despite the public’s perception of orphanages as grim, despairing places, Mary knew that St. Ann’s was a refuge for a lot of kids. The short notes she sent out to her fellow volunteers before picnics and Christmas parties were wry, unblinking glimpses into life for the young and unwanted in the nation’s capital:
Tarrone: He is five years old and totally traumatized. He saw his ten-month-old baby sister killed by her father, who was outraged that she and her twin had climbed up on a forbidden sofa. If Santa made reference to Tarrone’s progress with the alphabet and his card-box, I think it might be well-received. He cries easily. . . . Dion, he is seven. He is an attractive and likable child, except when he goes to school, where he does really awful things and is thrown out. He says he is insulted by [a] bully, whose side is taken by [the] teacher. On the positive side, he wants to be a fireman. Santa should know that Dion had a good talk about his problems with Chief Judge Rogers of D.C. Court.
Some of the children were so demoralized by their own lack of an education that they burst into tears at the very sight of the alphabet. When the kids went to school, many of them lashed out with anger and violence against their peers, ashamed that they could not read.
Mary invested time and money at St. Ann’s. She bought the kids Christmas presents, paid private school tuition for some of the children, helped out some of the young mothers and staff at St. Ann’s financially, and wrote checks to the orphanage when there were budget shortfalls.
She made a difference. One need only read the extraordinary letter Mary received from a St. Ann’s graduate, Rita Markley, who had been at the orphanage in the late 1950s and early ’60s (the same Rita who had so charmed Bobby Kennedy when he visited with the St. Ann’s kids). The letter deserves to be quoted at some length:
I used to call you Mary Gloria when I was a little girl. I remembered this unexpectedly while I was at a party a few months ago. Someone was holding forth about the plight of board
er babies and unwanted children, the horrors of institutionalizing the young. I usually ignore drunken sermons, and the loud prating bores so fond of delivering them, but I found myself straining to hear all of it, even though the speaker was clear across the room. He rambled on about the lack of love and attention for institution children and portrayed orphanages as little more than incubators for psychopaths. I wanted to break his neck, but realized this would only confirm his view of orphan alumni. . . .
I fumed silently and then remembered you so suddenly and clearly that it made me laugh out loud. Not complete memories, but quick images like slides or snapshots: you splashing in the pool with us at Hickory Hill, scooping me up in your arms countless times when that dog Brunus (Bruno?) came bounding too close; passing out those peanut butter and jelly sandwich squares so emphatically that no one ever dared refuse. One afternoon we rode all over the lawn in a golf cart (was it a golf cart?). You helped me find my tennis shoe a hundred times, always underneath that trampoline beside the pool. I put it there deliberately more than once. And you took us to the best Christmas parties in the world. I remember the Santa Claus who said that he couldn’t find a parking place for his reindeer, and how I thought that was about the funniest thing I’d ever heard. . . .
I wondered if any of us ever thanked you. Or if you knew, directly, how much we loved our Mary Gloria. I’m writing because I want you to know. . . .
After I was adopted, it took me several years to adjust to my new home. I missed everyone at St. Ann’s terribly, especially at dinner time. The concept of separate houses and yards, separate toys, separate lives was entirely foreign to me. I had to learn not to take the roller skates from someone else’s front steps, not to leave my bike outside for someone else to use when I was finished riding. At St. Ann’s, we all had equal claim to any toy in sight. The cardinal rule was to share and the worst punishment was not for screaming or turning over chairs but for being selfish. Even a crybaby or a tattletale was better than someone who didn’t share. . . .