Published: March 07, 2008 05:21 pm            

Barron Mills: February 20, 2008

This old journalist had all but forgotten about his fellow news reporter on the Winston-Salem Journal in the early 1950s. But it brought back some fond memories of those days when I read in the Raleigh News and Observer recently an article about female reporters and one mentioned most prominently was Marjorie Hunter, a graduate of Elon College, who made it to the top of the list of prestigious news reporters who covered some of the top news events in Washington and New York. I also was unaware that Marjorie had died in 2001. She was a couple of years my senior.

I first met Maggie Hunter, as she was fondly known, in Raleigh when she was a reporter on the staff of the News and Observer. I was a recent graduate of the School of Journalism, at the University of North Carolina and relinquished my duties as editor of The Daily Tar Heel to become a staff member of United Press Association and after a week of training in the Raleigh bureau I was ready to report as a fledgling reporter to the U.P. bureau in Memphis, Tenn. I had the distinction of becoming night news editor with a third-floor office all to myself in the Press-Scimitar building. I had nothing to entertain me except the clatter of teletype machines pounding out the news articles. I was a one-man news machine from 4 p.m. until midnight.

But I have veered away from my intention of telling you about Maggie Hunter.

Maggie loved people, a good news story and partying. In fact, the first time I saw her she was at a party in Raleigh and I was checking around for a job after having been recently released from Uncle Sam's Navy. I was called up for active duty in the Reserves. The party was in an apartment house for young people. I was invited by my fraternity brother and fellow journalist, Ed Joyner. I spent the night in the YMCA.

Women didn't cover politics in North Carolina during the 1950s. They covered society news and wrote about other women. But Hunter was not interested in that kind of reporting. She wanted to be in the center of more lasting news. She covered cops and courts, and then the General Assembly in Raleigh. She was a first. She was the only female reporter back then who consistently covered the Legislature and state politics. She could be enchanting, but she was tough when it came to getting the facts out of a person she was interviewing.

In 1955 she challenged the right of a legislative committee to meet in closed session and refused to leave as ordered. She was carried from the floor still sitting in her chair! In 1961, Maggie joined The New York Times' Washington bureau, where she became the first woman to cover a beat other than that of the president's wife. Hunter covered Congress and the White House.

Former President Gerald Ford described Marjorie Hunter as a "...very probing reporter. She was a true newspaper professional."

When you get off work at midnight, it's hard to find a date there in Winston-Salem. They didn't even have an all-night movie house. So those of us who worked on the night shift putting together the morning newspaper were still full of vim and vigor when it was time to punch the time clock and go home.

Most nights we went home, but in those days even the television stations signed off at midnight. So many a Saturday night, Maggie Hunter would invite a bunch of us reporters to come to her apartment which was within walking distance of the newspaper office. As one person described this gathering as a place to determine who could "tell the biggest lie." Of course I never qualified for such a title, but it was fun to invade Maggie's apartment and have an hour or so of good times with friends in the newspaper profession.



Barron Mills came to Asheboro in March 1955 when he bought The Randolph Guide and became its editor and publisher. He sold the paper in 1991 but still lives in Asheboro.

        

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