Book description
"She was my idol," said columnist Mary McGrory. McGrory, in
writing of women, referred to Doris Fleeson as "incomparably the
first political journalist of her time." Fleeson was, in fact, the
first woman in the United States to become a nationally syndicated
political columnist. In 1945, with the encouragement of Henry Mencken,
she launched her column. In her career she would write some 5,500
columns during the next twenty-two years. Fleeson's appearance could be
disarming. Once at a party Lady Bird Johnson exclaimed, "What a
gorgeous dress, Doris. It makes you look just like a sweet,
old-fashioned girl." The wife of Senator Stuart Symington
interjected, "Yes, just a sweet old-fashioned girl with a shiv in
her hand." CAROLYN SAYLER lives in Lyons, Kansas, ten miles from
the town of Sterling where Doris Fleeson was born in 1901. Knowing
members of the Fleeson family, she began researching the life of the
columnist whose straightforward take on Washington became a daily fix
for newspaper readers across the nation. Sayler has a background in
journalism as a member of a Kansas newspaper family. She is the author
of a history of Manhattan, Kansas, which tells of the town's founding
during the Free State struggle, its strong connections with New England,
and its abolitionist college, now Kansas State University.
