I cannot recall a time, until she retired in 2010, when veteran reporter Helen Thomas was not covering the White House.

It was 1961 when Thomas began covering news in the nation's capital as a member of the White House press corps. John F. Kennedy was president. I was 11 years old.

As I grew up, through the administrations of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, Thomas' abilities and stature as a female reporter grew, working first for United Press International and then for Hearst newspapers, amid a sea of men covering presidential politics.

I found myself as a teenager and young woman watching televised White House press briefings, waiting to hear Thomas' familiar voice. Seated on the front row of reporters, she was unafraid to pose driving – sometimes-blunt – questions to heads of state.

Republican and Democratic presidents alike, and their press secretaries, faced the unofficial head of the White House press corps with the respect she had earned, continuing through the administrations of Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush.

By the time Barack Obama became president, Thomas was, amazingly, still covering White House news at the age of 89. The admiration of her fellow White House reporters and the unofficial status they gave her as dean of the briefing room was long in evidence by the fact she was given the honor of closing each news conference with the familiar, "Thank you, Mr. President."

As I watched Thomas at work during televised press conferences, she made no attempt to hide her stance on some issues. I recall she opposed the war in Iraq, for example, as evidenced by her probing questions about the Bush administration's reasons for going to war.

With her death July 20, an American treasure is lost. Her legacy will live on, as her great success as a woman in a man's world led the way for female journalists in the U.S.

"Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism," Obama said in a statement after her death. "She never failed to keep presidents – myself included – on their toes."

Thomas had begun in a clerical position at the Washington Daily News and then as a radio writer for United Press in 1943. By the mid-1950s, when most women journalists were writing about social news and articles about recipes, Thomas was writing about federal agencies. She was assigned to the White House coverage after having covered JFK's presidential campaign.

In a Twitter message after her death, longtime CBS News White House reporter Mark Knoller commented on his impression of Thomas.

"Helen was a better reporter than she was a writer – but in her prime had more than her share of scoops the rest of us would try to match," he wrote, adding, "Pity the poor White House press aide who would try to tell Helen, 'You can't stand there.'"

Many of her fellow reporters have also recently shared their memories of this colorful trailblazer, many crediting her with breaking the glass ceiling for female journalists as they paid tribute to her for decades of hard work in Washington.

Thomas announced her retirement from covering White House news in June 2010, at the age of 89, following controversial remarks she made in a private conversation videotaped and posted on YouTube, in which she said Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go back to Poland or Germany.

In her retirement announcement, which followed 11 days later, she said she regretted her remarks and they did not reflect her belief peace would come to the Middle East when all parties embraced "mutual respect and tolerance."

Ironically, the same conversation that led to so much controversy and her sudden retirement was an otherwise convivial conversation she was having with a couple of young teenage boys who were visiting the White House accompanied by their uncle.

According to White House reporter Paula Cruickshank, who was present during the conversation, Thomas spoke about her opinion on Israel only after prompted by the uncle, and ended the conversation on a positive note by recommending a career goal for the two youths. Her final words to them seem, in retrospect, to sum up how she felt about her own life.

"Go for journalism," she said. "You'll never regret it."

Whether you admired her for speaking her mind or condemned her for it, Helen Thomas was a female journalist to be respected and applauded for blazing a trail for today's female reporters to follow.

Thank you, Ms. Thomas.

Linda

Wojciechowski

associate editor

Catasauqua Press