Anne O'Hare McCormick on Display

Spangler Learning Center has a new exhibition! It is titled, Anne O'Hare McCormick: Graduate of St. Mary's Academy and Honoree of ODU, and you can find it in the display cases on the bottom floor from January through June 2002.

McCormick graduated as valedictorian from the Academy of St. Mary's of the Springs in 1898, and thirty years later was awarded an honorary degree from St. Mary's of the Springs College, in recognition of her achievements as a journalist. (Due to a charter granted in 1911, the Academy of St. Mary's of the Springs became St. Mary's of the Springs College, which in turn was renamed Ohio Dominican in 1968.)

While traveling overseas with her husband, an international businessman, Anne O'Hare McCormick began submitting stories to The New York Times in the early 1920's. Soon, she developed interview relationships with important political figures, such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini, and many readers learned to depend on her analyses of world events. McCormick published her first book, The Hammer and the Scythe: Communist Russia Enters the Second Decade, in 1928, but no other books by her were published in her lifetime, despite pleas from publishers. In 1936, McCormick became the first woman ever appointed to the editorial board of The New York Times, and a Pulitzer Prize soon followed.

Visit the exhibition in Spangler to learn more about this brilliant woman, to read a couple of her articles, and to view some of the books she collected and eventually donated to this library, including one that was signed by Harry Truman!