Obit: Rachael Bail, journalist, playwright, and 41-year member of NPC

Rachael Elizabeth Bail, a journalist, playwright, producer and 41-year member of the National Press Club, died August 27 at her home in Arlington, Va.

Funeral services will be at her parents’ church in Arcadia and a memorial service is planned by MDC at the Club on a date to be announced. Donations in her memory may be given to the McLean Drama Company, at Bail/MDC, 520 12th Street South, #303, Arlington, VA, 22202, or the Arcadia Church of the Brethren, 25 Mills Ave., Arcadia, FL, 34266-4616.

Bail, who said she was "frustrated by the lack of venues in the Washington area presenting new work," established the non-profit McLean Drama Company (MDC) in 2003 "to present and inspire dramatic writing and new American plays" by Washington area playwrights. MDC programs include an annual 10-minute play contest.

"She loved the (National Press) Club so much," said her daughter Susan Baumel. Undeterred by physical challenges in recent years, Bail enjoyed using the Club's fitness center and frequently attended Friday evening gatherings at the Reliable Source. Although a pioneer woman journalist and writer, Baumel noted that her mother was old-fashioned in one sense: She refused to reveal her age.

Bail was born in Washington, Pa., and raised in Arcadia, Fla., a small DeSoto County pioneer town where her preacher parents, Samuel and Gurney Simpson Bail, served at the Church of the Brethren. At the age of eight she published her first newspaper, which she called "The Children's Star." She was valedictorian at her high school, studied at Bridgewater (Va.) College and graduated with a journalism degree from Florida State University. She started her career at the Tampa Daily Times and moved to New York City to cover the cosmetics industry for Women’s Wear Daily. She married concert violinist Herbert Baumel and the couple moved to Caracas, Venezuela and then Rome, Italy, where she wrote a society column for the Rome Daily American.

After returning to New York, she and her husband were active in the theater scene; he was a Broadway concert master and she authored the book "Alec Templeton's Music Boxes" and was active with the Overseas Press Club. Following her divorce, Bail worked as a reporter an editor for Gannett in White Plains, N.Y., the Florida Times Union in Jacksonville, and the St. Petersburg Times before moving to Washington, D.C. in 1975 to join the Voice of America (VOA). At VOA she was Supreme Court correspondent and editor, and interviewed such luminaries as Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Sir Laurence Olivier, Fidel Castro, Estee Lauder, Robert Redford and Peter Ustinov. She retied from VOA in 2001.

Bail championed women’s rights by promoting the work of women in the arts. She was a member of the Dramatists Guild and wrote more than 20 plays. As founder and president of the MDC for nearly 15 years, she conducted its nationwide 10 minute play competition at the Club, Alden Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, the Capital Fringe Festival, FLASHPOINT- the Mead Theatre Lab and the 2015 Women’s Voices Theater Festival.

Bail had three children and survivors include her daughter Susan and son Samuel Baumel.