Mary McGrory

Washington lost a lyricist and an incisive political observer when columnist Mary McGrory died Wednesday at age 85.

Born in Boston, Miss McGrory contributed book reviews to the New York Herald before she began writing for the Washington Star in 1947. In 1954, she became an instant star on her first news writing assignment, coverage of the McCarthy hearings. She became a nationally syndicated columnist in 1960 and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for her coverage of the Watergate hearings. When the Star’s presses rumbled to their final stop in 1981, Miss McGrory transferred to The Washington Post, where she remained until she retired in 2003.

Miss McGrory could capture the character of a person in a phrase, and did so often in her columns. She anguished over adjectives and adverbs, taking delight in finding just the right word for just the right time.

Writing in the breathless air of Washington’s powerbrokers, Miss McGrory never lost her New England roots. She wrote as if trying to describe events to an aunt, never mistaking highfalutin phrasemaking for poetic descriptions. She loved laughter and song. She was a companion of presidents and a friend of orphans. Miss McGrory was a spirited liberal, but she always kept an open mind to new ideas and new faces in Washington. Whether observing the barren brawls of the Senate or describing her perpetual battles with squirrels, Miss McGrory told the truth as she saw it.

Mary Lou Forbes, Commentary Editor for The Washington Times and longtime personal friend and co-worker of Miss McGrory at the Star, said, “Mary brought grace to every word she touched and was indeed a master of literary expression, which she combined skillfully in describing unfolding events.”

There are echoes of Miss McGrory’s life in Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “If”: “If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,/Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,/If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,/If all men count with you, but none too much:/If you can fill the unforgiving minute/With sixty second’s worth of distance run,/Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,/And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!”

Washington has lost music and magic with Miss McGrory’s passing. She will be mourned; she will be missed.