Andy Mollison obituary

Beneath Andy Mollison’s rumpled appearance, often highlighted by a patina of pipe tobacco ash, lay a sharp mind, a warm heart and a ready smile.

Mollison, 75, who died Wednesday, May 21, from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, served as chairman of the Board of Governors and president of the National Press Club during the mid-1980s, a time when it was undergoing significant changes. He played a key role in the Club’s merger with the once all-women’s Washington Press Club and in the refinancing of the National Press Building that assured the Club’s future in its historic location.

Mollison’s career as a Club officer rested on the toss of a coin. When he first ran for the Board of Governors, he tied with Herb Cheshire of McGraw Hill. Former Club president John Fogarty, who was the board chairman that year, recalled that Mollison and Cheshire came to him and suggested that they settle the outcome with a coin toss. “We met in the Club bar, called over some witnesses, tossed the coin, Andy won and we all had a drink,” Fogarty said.

During Mollision’s year as board chairman in 1985, the Club and the Washington Press Club merged. Mollison was one of three members from the Club — in addition to then-president Dave Hess and vice president (and later Club president) Mary Kay Quinlan — involved in the negotiations. Mollison was a staunch advocate of the merger and wanted to expand the role of women in the Club.

Two years later, as Club president, Mollison made sure women were featured prominently among the head table guests. “I don’t want a luncheon head table to look like a Rabbinical Council,” Mollison told Gil Klein, his Speakers Committee chairman and later Club president.

Mollison’s term as Club president began with an Open House on Jan. 16, 1987. Pat McGrath, a broadcast journalist and later Club board member, recalled that Mollison provided him and a TV camera crew with access to the party, from which a video titled "The Scuzzy Scot" was made and shown at Mollison’s inauguration a few weeks later.
The video lampooned Mollison’s “reputation for being a horrible dresser and a cheapskate,” McGrath recalled. “As I reported in the spoof, Andy's first act at president was to spend Club money on 288 pairs of ‘Groucho Glasses’ for the open house party. So the ballroom was full that night with people wearing the horn rimmed glasses with a huge nose and big mustache attached to them.

“Mollison played along with the theme of his inaugural video by declaring a priority: ‘The one group that hasn't been represented in the Club are the cheap skates,’” McGrath recalled Mollision saying in his inaugural address.

“Andy was a popular guy and president, who got his year off to a great start with a party full of fun and laughter - a reminder, a lot of people thought - of the way the Club ought to be,” McGrath said.

During his term as president, Mollison was heavily involved in negotiations to refinance the National Press Building after its reconstruction, according to Klein, now the Club History Committee chairman. He was also one of the catalysts who helped raise $650,000 for the Washington Press Club Foundation to complete a professional oral history of 59 pioneer women journalists, a project headed by former Washington Press Club President Peggy Simpson of Ms Magazine.

“Andy was invaluable in helping us sort out categories of people, as well as some of the specific people which the committee chose,” Simpson recalled.

Mollison often said with pride that two Japanese prime ministers spoke at the Club during his administration. As Klein recalled, Mollison would quip: “My record was perfect. Both had to resign in disgrace.”

Andrew R. Mollison was born May 2, 1939, in Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich. He studied Ibero-American history at Catholic University from 1957 to 1961 and served as student body president. His newspaper career began in Silver Spring, Md., where he served as news editor at the weekly Suburban Record during parts of 1961 and 1962.

Mollison served in the U.S. Army and spent parts of 1962 and 1963 studying Russian at the Army Language School in Monterey, Calif., before being sent to Germany as a signals intelligence analyst stationed in Germany. But instead of spending his time eavesdropping on Soviet and East German military activities, Mollison was put in charge of creating and editing a unit newspaper, The Talon. Those duties earned him the Army Commendation Medal for establishing the newspaper of the 319th Battalion, U.S. Army Security Agency.

Back in the United States, Mollison finished his academic career in 1967 with a B.A. in journalism from Michigan State University. He quickly went to work at the Detroit Free Press covering city and county governments, election fraud, hospital inefficiencies and the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He was part of the staff awarded a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the causes of the Detroit riot after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

From 1970 to 1973, Mollison worked as a reporter covering local government and schools on Long Island for Newsday. In January, 1974 Mollison came to Washington where he would spend the next 31 years reporting, first for the Dayton Daily News and, two years later, for the Cox Newspapers chain, which owned the News.

Hess, who was a Washington correspondent for the Akron Beacon Journal at the same time Mollison was a Dayton correspondent, recalled his fellow Ohio newspaper competitor as “a digging investigative reporter who took nothing for granted and was always skeptical of what he was told by politicians and government flacks.”

During his three decades in the Cox Washington Bureau, Mollison covered Congress, the White House, women’s rights and peace movements, education and politics. In the mid-1980s he was chief political correspondent for the Cox chain.

While covering the 1976 Democratic primary on a snowy night in New Hampshire, the electricity in Mollison’s Concord motel suddenly failed, recalled Andy Glass, a fellow Cox reporter who was with him that night and who later became the Cox Washington bureau chief. Although their then-Washington bureau chief told them to go to a local police station and try to file from there, Mollison suggested they “just move the operation into the hallway where the backup generator was doing its job.” They filed without a hitch.

In 1997, Mollison’s reporting excellence was recognized when he won the James M. Cox Award for Public Service, which was given annually to the reporter within the Cox chain of 17 daily newspapers whose work reflected the chain’s founder’s admonition to “keep free the strength of the strong, while yet protecting the weak, though without coddling, against abuses of power.”

Mollison was a living legend in the Cox bureau, as much for his appearance and the mountainous mass of newspapers, scraps of paper and other items that buried his desk as for his journalism.

Chuck Holmes, a former Cox reporter and editor now at National Public Radio, recalled interning with Mollison in 1980. After a long campaign trip, Mollison “walked into the bureau … with his clothes in two brown paper grocery bags. I'm not sure I ever got the full story about why he wasn't traveling with proper luggage.” The bureau office manager immediately demanded that Mollison do something about his cluttered desk.

“With a sly grin framed by that full beard, Andy grabbed an empty box, placed it at the end of his desk, and then took a few steps to the opposite side,” Holmes recalled. “With one impressive shove, the mountain tumbled. Papers, notebooks and all matter of office supplies spilled into that box. Andy then closed the flaps, left the box in place, and took his seat behind his desk, satisfied.”

Bob Deans, another Cox reporter who sat next to Mollison when the bureau moved to Capitol Hill, recalled overhearing Mollison’s side of telephone conversations with sources.

“On the other end of the line, there could have been a Labor Department statistician, a congressman on the take or a card shark on the lamb. Didn't matter. After a few minutes on the phone with Mollison, they must have felt like they were talking to their closest confidant,” Deans recalled. “His voice set him well wide of the Beltway, somewhere just east of the Mississippi River, the kind of guy you could trust with your girlfriend's phone number.”

Said Andy Alexander, the Cox Washington bureau chief when Mollison retired, and a former Club board member: “He was genuine, unfailingly nice, principled, thoughtful and had a real social conscience. And he was totally honest and incredibly thorough.”

Mollison and his wife, Char, moved into a Sears house (originally sold by Sears Roebuck) when they moved to Washington. Although childless, they hosted an annual Fourth of July party at their home in the Palisades Village area of northwest Washington and invited friends to bring their children.

“They stocked a toy chest so kids would have things to play with,” remembered Tom Price, a Dayton Daily News reporter in the Cox bureau. “They threw a party every July 4 that included watching the Palisades parade, then consuming a Char-prepared buffet that soared far above hot dogs and hamburgers.”

The Palisades Village became Mollison’s passion after he retired from journalism in 2007. He helped mobilize volunteers to help older people stay in their homes as long as possible. He was president of the village board and helped found the Washington Area Village Exchange, a network of similar organizations in the region. He was vice president of the Washington area exchange and served on a task force of the nationwide Village to Village network, promoting the village concept.

Mollison is survived by his wife, Char Mollison; his brother James Mollison and wife Germaine; his brother Thomas Mollison and wife Patricia; his sister Mary Mollison; his sister-in-law Alane Callander and husband Bruce; one niece and nine nephews and their families.

Contributions in Mollison’s honor may be made to: Palisades Village, PO Box 40403, Washington, DC 20016 or online at www.palisadesvillage.org; the Washington Press Club Foundation, 529 14th St. NW, Suite 1115, Washington, DC 20045; or the Washington Area Villages Exchange (WAVE), PO Box 7464, Alexandria, VA 22307.

A memorial celebration of Andy Mollison life will be held June 14 at a place to be announced.