It was the work ethic I admired, more than her journalism.
On a sweltering day in 2002, I watched Helen Thomas walk out of the White House press room. With the slow and careful gait of an elderly woman, she crossed a driveway near the West Wing to chat with some newspaper writers. I was there from The Herald. Everett was about to be recognized with an All-America City award.
Thomas was curious. She wanted to know who we were, what we were doing. For a moment, she talked with me. I asked permission and snapped her photo with a throwaway Kodak.
Her advice about newspaper reporting? Keep at it.
Clearly, here was someone who kept at it. That day — July 31, 2002 — Thomas was just shy of her 82nd birthday. I never checked to see what she’d written after that day’s questioning of then-White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. President George W. Bush was off in Texas on vacation.
Whatever she wrote on that sticky-hot day, she had gotten up, put on a summer jacket and sturdy shoes, and gone to work. For that, I had — and still have — a lot of respect.
In January 2009, when a young Herald colleague was headed to President Barack Obama’s inauguration, I joked that she should “Say hi to Helen Thomas for me.” She joked back, “Isn’t she dead?”
Monday’s sad and sorry end to Thomas’s remarkable career lends weight to the notion that there are worse things than death. Imagine the bipartisan outpouring of praise had the 89-year-old Thomas died. Instead, she committed professional suicide with outrageous and inexcusable comments. She added a damning footnote to her otherwise distinguished biography.
In an interview with Rabbi David Nesenoff, which turned up online last week, Thomas was questioned about Israel. “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine,” she said in remarks caught on video. Nesenoff, according to the Associated Press, is an independent filmmaker who runs a website, rabbilive.com. Pressed further, Thomas said the Jews of Israel should “go home” to “Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else.”
On Monday, she retired from Hearst Newspapers. She’d been a columnist covering national affairs. And so it ended, not her life but her working life.
Her career included 57 years as a correspondent for United Press International. With UPI, she was the first female White House bureau chief. The website Politico said Thomas was the first female member of the White House Correspondents Association and the first female officer of the National Press Club, which had a history of barring women.
Last Aug. 4, as Obama turned 48, he brought cupcakes to Thomas, who shares his birthday. The AP reported that she told him her birthday wishes: “world peace and a real health care reform bill.” On Tuesday, Obama called her recent comments “offensive.”
In 2002, before the All-America City event in the Old Executive Office Building, I peeked into the White House press room and saw Thomas in her front-and-center seat. Her presence there seemed a stubborn and wonderful example — you’re never too old to work hard and well.
Now, I’m not so sure. Would Thomas, a child of Lebanese immigrants, ever have said what she did — even if she believed it — during her intellectual prime? She must know that with today’s voracious media, a camera is always on.
Have you ever heard an elderly relative say something so outrageous you’re glad no one else was around to hear? I have.
There is no excusing what Thomas said. Still, how sad that her retirement didn’t come sooner. Too bad those 89th birthday cupcakes weren’t a happy goodbye.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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