WASHINGTON - Helen Thomas, a trailblazing White House correspondent in a press corps dominated by men and later the dean of the White House briefing room, died Saturday at home in Washington. She was 92.
Her death was announced by the Gridiron Club, one of Washington’s leading news societies. Thomas was a past president of that organization.
Thomas covered every president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama for United Press International and, later, Hearst Newspapers.
To her colleagues, she was the unofficial but undisputed head of the press corps - her status ratified by her signature line at the end of every White House news conference, “Thank you, Mr. President.”
“Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism,” Obama said in a statementSaturday. “She never failed to keep presidents - myself included - on their toes.”
Presidents grew to respect, even to like, Thomas for her forthrightness and energy, which sustained her well after the age at which most people have settled into retirement. President Bill Clinton gave her a cake on Aug. 4, 1997, her 77th birthday. Twelve years later, Obama gave her cupcakes for her 89th. At his first news conference in February 2009, Obama called on her, saying: “Helen, I’m excited. This is my inaugural moment.”
But 16 months later, Thomas abruptly announced her retirement from Hearst amid an uproar over her assertion that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back where they belonged, perhapsto Germany and Poland. Her remarks, made days earlier at a White House event, set off a storm when a videotape was posted.
In her retirement announcement, Thomas, whoseparents immigrated to the United States from what is now Lebanon, said that she deeply regretted her remarks and that they did not reflect her “heartfelt belief ” that peace would come to the Middle East only when all parties embraced “mutual respectand tolerance.”
“May that day come soon,” she said.
Thomas’ career bridged two eras, beginning during World War II when people got their news mostly from radio, newspapers and movie newsreels, and extending intothe era of 24-hour information on cable television and the Internet.
She resigned from UPI on May 16, 2000, a day after it was taken over by an organization with links to the Unification Church.
Weeks later, Thomas was hired by Hearst to write a twice-weekly column on national issues. She spent the last 10 years of her working life there.
When Thomas took a job as a radio writer for United Press in 1943 (15 years before it merged with the International News Service to become UPI), most female journalists wrote about social events and homemaking.
She worked her way into full-time reporting and by the mid-1950s was covering federal agencies. She covered Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960, and when he won she became the first woman assigned to the White House full time by a news service.
Thomas was also the first woman to be elected an officer of the White House Correspondents’ Association and the first to serve as its president.
In 1975, she became the first woman elected to the Gridiron Club, which for 90 years had been a men-only bastion of Washington journalists.
Thomas was known for her dawn-to-dark work hours, and she won her share of exclusives and near-exclusives. She was the only female print journalist to accompany President Richard Nixon on his breakthrough trip to China in 1972.
“Helen Thomas leaves a legacy of tenacity and a determination to hold the powerful accountable,” Society of Professional Journalists President Sonny Albarado said in a statement. “She stands as a model for women journalists. And the controversy that clouded her later years cannot diminish that history.”
Albarado is city editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Thomas also wrote a half-dozen books. Her first, Dateline: White House, was published by Macmillan in 1975.
Helen Thomas was born in Winchester, Ky., on Aug. 4, 1920, one of 10 children of George and Mary Thomas. Her father, who could not read or write, encouraged his sons and daughters to go to college.
In 1942, when Thomas graduated from what is now Wayne State University in Detroit as an English major, the country was at war. She went to Washington to look for a job.
She found one, as a waitress. But she did not last long. “I didn’t smile enough,” she recalled years later.
The Washington Daily News soon hired her for a clerical post, and soon after that she began her career with the United Press news service.
“‘Where’d this girl come from?’” she asked rhetorically in an appearance before a women’s group in 1999. “I love my work, and I think that I was so lucky to pick a profession where it’s a joy to go to work every day.” Information for this article was contributed by Mark Landler of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 3 on 07/21/2013