Club to salute 50 years of women membership at Silver Owls Hoot, Sept. 16
Four prominent women journalists, all former Press Club presidents, will provide one of the highlights of the National Press Club dinner, Friday, Sept. 16, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Club's historic vote to admit women as members. The commemorative dinner is being organized and arranged by the Club's Silver Owls at its Fall Hoot.
"We are calling our program 'Down from the Balcony' as a way to recognize the moment in 1971 when professional women journalists were finally admitted as NPC members and allowed to cover Club speakers and other NPC news events on an equal footing with their male colleagues," said Molly Sinclair McCartney, longtime staff writer for the Washington Post and the first woman chair of the Silver Owls. Prior to the vote, women journalists were allowed to cover luncheons and other news events only from the Ballroom Balcony.
The Hoot is open to all members and their guests. The dinner begins at 6 p.m. in the Holeman Lounge and Ballroom. Tickets are $35 for a three-course roast beef dinner or a vegetarian option. The dinner will be preceded by a cash bar and passed appetizers. Purchase tickets and obtain further information online.
The Hoot also will recognize Club members who have achieved silver, golden, and platinum status since the last Hoot in 2019. Silver Owls are those who have been Club members 25 years or longer. Golden Owls have been members 50 years or more. Platinum Owls have been members 60 years or longer.
Mesfin Mekonen, manager of the Reliable Source restaurant, will be honored with a special Golden Owls award. Mekonen, a native of Ethiopia, has been with the Club 50 years, rising from a kitchen worker to the restaurant manager. Mekonen will attend the Hoot with his wife, Elizabeth.
The four women journalists who will appear as a panel are Peggy Simpson, Ann Carey McFeatters, Mary Kay Quinlan and Lisa Matthews.
Simpson's long journalism career includes, among other jobs, 17 years with the Associated Press, covering national politics for the Boston Herald, economic issues for Hearst Newspapers, and opening a Washington bureau for Ms. magazine. She is now active in the Journalism and Women Symposium, JAWS, an organization that describes itself as "a powerful network of women committed to supporting one another with friendship, knowledge and career advice."
McFeatters, is a former Washington Bureau Chief for the Pittsburg Post-Gazette and The Toledo Blade, a longtime syndicated columnist for Scripps Howard News Service, and the author of a biography of Sandra Day O'Connor, the former U.S. Supreme Court justice.
Both Simpson and McFeatters are past presidents of the Washington Press Club, once a rival of the National Press Club. The two clubs merged in 1985.
Quinlan, a former Washington correspondent for The Omaha World Herald, was elected president of the National Press Club in 1986. She was the second woman president, following Vivian Vahlberg, who was elected in 1982. Quinlan is now the associate dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Matthews, the U.S. video assignment editor for the Associated Press, is the immediate past president of the Press Club. She was Club president on the actual 50th anniversary of the historic vote to admit women as members. A recognition of the vote could not be held last year due to restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
The four women in an "unscripted and unrehearsed" panel discussion "will tell us what it was like for women to come down from the NPC Balcony and into the Club's main premises after the 1971 vote," Silver Owls Chair McCartney said. The group also will talk about the negotiations that led to the merger of the Washington Press Club and the National Press Club, McCartney added.
Jen Judson, the current Club president, will deliver welcoming remarks. Judson is the 115th president in Press Club history and the 15th woman president. Several past women presidents will be attending the dinner.
Vahlberg, the first woman president of the National Press Club, has tested positive for COVID, and while not seriously ill is unable to personally attend the Hoot. Instead, she will appear onscreen in a videotaped interview with Gil Klein, chair of the Club's History and Heritage Team.
As a reporter for The Daily Oklahoman newspaper, Vahlberg covered from the Ballroom Balcony the Jan. 15, 1971, vote to admit women. Eleven years later, she was elected Club president. Vahlberg will discuss her journey from the Balcony to the Club presidency.
Klein, who is the author of "Tales from The National Press Club," a detailed history of the Club, will present an illustrated account of the struggle for women to gain membership. The Club was founded in 1908 and for the next 63 years its membership remained male only. That ended when Club members, after vigorous and heated debate, voted 227-56 in favor of admitting women.
