Helen Thomas

At 92 years old, Helen Thomas has this physical status:

Helen Amelia Thomas (August 4, 1920 – July 20, 2013) was an American reporter and writer best known for her long-serving membership in the White House press corps.

She covered the White House during the Obama administration, from the start of the Kennedy administration to the second year of the Obama administration.

She is best known as the "dean of Washington, D.C." and is best known for coining the phrase "Thank you, Mr. President." Thomas worked with the United Press and post-1958 successor, United Press International (UPI), for 57 years, first as a reporter and then as the White House's bureau manager.

She then worked for Hearst Newspapers, covering national affairs and the White House from 2000 to 2010.

Thomas was the first female officer of the National Press Club, the first female member and president of the White House Correspondents' Union, as well as the first female member of the Gridiron Club.

She wrote six books; her last, with co-author Craig Crawford, was called Listen Up, Mr. President : What You Always Wanted Your President Does Know and Do (2009). Thomas resigned from Hearst Newspapers on June 7, 2010, after making controversial remarks she made about Jews, Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian war, and her assertion that "Congress, the White House, Hollywood, and Wall Street are owned by Zionists" -- leading to numerous allegations of antisemitism.

She began working as an opinion columnist for the Falls Church News-Press until February 2012.

Early life and education

Thomas, a seventh of George and Mary's nine children (Rowady) Thomas's descendants from Tripoli, Lebanon (then part of the Ottoman Empire), was born in Winchester, Kentucky. When Thomas entered Ellis Island, New York, she said she learned neither read nor write, and that her father's surname, "Antonious," had been changed to "Thomas" as he entered the United States. Thomas was raised mainly in Detroit, Michigan, where her family moved when she was four years old and where her father owned a grocery store. Thomas recalled her experience growing up: : Thomas said:

"They wanted to make you feel you weren't 'American,'" she said in Detroit in the 1920s. She belonged to the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

Thomas attended Detroit Public Schools and decided to become a writer while attending Eastern High School. She enrolled in Wayne University in Detroit in 1942, earning a bachelor's degree in English as the school did not yet have a degree in journalism.

Personal life

Thomas referred to herself as a liberal. She preferred her work over personal life for the bulk of her adult life. Thomas married Douglas Cornell, a former White House reporter who was just resigned as the White House correspondent for the Associated Press, at the age of 51. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease four years ago, and his mother cared for him until his death in 1982.

Source

Early career

Thomas went to Washington, D.C., to live. She began her career in journalism as a copygirl for the now defunct Washington Daily News. She joined her coworkers in a strike action and was fired after eight months at the paper.

Thomas began working with the United Press in 1943 and wrote about women's issues for its radio wire service. Her first assignments concentrated on societal problems, women's news, and celebrity profiles. In the early fifties, she wrote UP's Names in the News column, for which she interviewed several Washington celebrities. She was assigned to cover the United States Department of Justice in 1955. She was later assigned to cover various departments, including the United States Department of Health, as well as Capitol Hill.

Thomas served as president of the Women's National Press Club from 1959 to 1960. In 1959, she and a few of her female journalists compelled the National Press Club, which later was outlawed to women, to allow them to attend a Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's address.

Source