Famed feminist, editor of Ms. magazine
YONKERS, N.Y. - Prominent feminist Mary Thom, a writer and former editor of Ms. magazine who also was an avid motorcyclist, crashed while riding on a highway and was killed, her nephew said Saturday. She was 68.
Thom had a passion for riding motorcycles and died riding her 1996 Honda Magna 750 on Friday evening on the Saw Mill River Parkway in Yonkers, just north of New York City, nephew Thom Loubet said.
“The important thing to know about Mary is that she was a major leader of the ’70s Feminist movement, but never desired the limelight,” Loubet said in an e-mail. “She stayed behind the scenes tirelessly crafting the message and simply making it better.”
Thom was one of Ms. magazine’s founding members and served as an editor there for about 20 years, leaving in 1992.
She also was an author who wrote a book about the history of Ms.
Most recently, Thom was the editor-in-chief of the Women’s Media Center’s features department, which produces reports and commentaries by national and international contributors.
Thom is survived by her sister and other relatives.
WWII veteran provided flag at Iwo Jima
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES - Alan Wood, a World War II veteran credited with providing the flag in the famous flag-raising on Iwo Jima, has died. He was 90.
Wood died April 18 of natural causes at his Sierra Madre home, his son Steven Wood said Saturday.
Wood was a 22-year-old Navy officer in charge of communications on a landing ship on Iwo Jima’s shores Feb. 23, 1945, when a Marine asked him for the biggest flag he could find.
Wood happened to have a 37-square-foot flag he had found months before in a Pearl Harbor Navy depot.
Five Marines and a Navy Corpsman later raised that flag in a stirring moment captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal.
Wood went on to work as technical artist and spokesman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge.
His wife, Elizabeth, died in 1985. Besides his son, Wood is survived by three grandchildren.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 8 on 04/29/2013