McCormick, Anne Elizabeth O'Hare

Anne O'Hare McCormick (1880-1954) was a foreign news correspondent for the New York Times, in an era where the field was almost exclusively "a man's world". In 1937, she won the Pulitzer Prize for correspondence, becoming the first woman to receive a major category Pulitzer award. Born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, UK, in 1880, she was educated in the United States at the College of Saint Mary of the Springs in Columbus, Ohio. After graduating she became an associate editor for the Catholic Universe Bulletin. Her 1911 marriage to Dayton businessman Francis McCormick, an importer and executive of the Dayton Plumbing Supply Company, led to frequent travels abroad, and her career as a journalist became more specialized. In 1921, she approached The New York Times about the prospect of becoming a freelance contributor from Europe, to cover stories not already investigated by the Times' foreign reporters. The Times accepted, and McCormick provided the first in-depth reports of the rise of Benito Mussolini and the Fascist movement in Italy. As described in a Current Biography article in 1940, "she was perhaps the first reporter to see that a young Milanese newspaper editor, lantern-jawed, hungry and insignificant, would attain world importance". Prior to the outbreak of World War II, McCormick obtained interviews with Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, German leader Adolf Hitler, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill, President of the United States Franklin D. Roosevelt, Popes Pius XI and XII, and other world leaders. In 1936, she became the first woman to ever be appointed to the previously eight-man editorial board of the Times. Her dispatches from Europe that year were recognized with the Pulitzer Prize in 1937. In 1939, with world war imminent, McCormick spent five months in 13 different nations, speaking with both political leaders and ordinary citizens in reporting the growing crisis. She was reported to have spent, every year, time with FDR discussing policy. After the war, during which she continued her reporting, McCormick was selected to represent the U.S. as a member of the first delegation to the UNESCO conference at the United Nations. Mrs. McCormick died in New York on May 29, 1954 and is buried at Gate of Heaven cemetery in Hawthorne, NY.