[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 152 (Wednesday, September 24, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9403-S9404]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      REMEMBERING MARY JANE FISHER

 Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I wish to commemorate the 
wonderful life of my friend, Mary Jane Fisher, a greatly admired 
journalist and publicist who passed away last Sunday, September 14, in 
Washington, DC, at the age of 90.
  Mary Jane was a dear friend whose life experiences were as varied as 
the people who knew and loved her. From 1976 to 2001, Mary Jane worked 
as the Washington correspondent for the National Underwriter, a 
publisher of insurance and financial services trade publications. Mrs. 
Fisher, who reported and wrote weekly columns for the company's 
property and casualty and health and life editions, was a well-known 
figure on Capitol Hill reporting on insurance activities. She was a 
frequent presence at hearings in the Ways and Means Committee, where I 
served for many of those years, and interviewed me often on health care 
and insurance matters.
  A former National Underwriter editor once referred to Mary Jane as 
the ``Helen Thomas'' of the insurance trade press. Mrs. Fisher had seen 
Presidents, Senators, Representatives, lobbyists, and reporters come 
and go during her more than three decades of covering insurance issues 
in Washington. If a congressional committee debated legislation 
involving pensions, retirement issues or health insurance, you could 
count on seeing her at the press table.
  During one particularly memorable Ways and Means hearing on Medicare 
prescription drug coverage, I watched from the dais as she beamed with 
pride. Sitting next to her on one side was her daughter, Susan, who has 
been my communications director for 22 years, and on the other sat her 
granddaughter Jennifer, who interned in the Ways and Means Democratic 
press office that summer.
  Her storied career, however, began on the west coast. Born Mary Jane 
Johnson in Berkeley, CA, on December 31, 1917, she was raised in 
Seattle, WA. Mrs. Fisher graduated from Franklin High School in 1935 
and attended the University of Washington, where she earned a 
bachelor's degree in journalism in 1939. After college, she worked as a 
reporter and editor for the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-
Intelligencer, and the Coos Bay World. In addition to reporting and 
editing in Coos Bay, in her spare time, Mrs. Fisher also served as 
forest fire spotter, looking for fires started by Japanese incendiary 
devices that had been carried across the Pacific via weather balloons.
  Mary Jane, as a lieutenant in the Waves in World War II from December 
1942 until January 1946, served as a public information officer at the 
Sand Point Naval Air Station in Seattle. In 1946, she was assigned to 
the staff handling publicity at the very first meeting of the United 
Nations in San Francisco.
  In 1946, after a whirlwind courtship of several weeks, she married 
Joel H. Fisher, a Washington attorney, who was then an assistant 
solicitor in the Commerce Department. They were married in Des Moines, 
IA, and Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace served as the best man. When 
her husband became the European counsel for the American Joint 
Distribution Committee, Mrs. Fisher moved to Paris, where she 
befriended Alice B. Toklas, a fellow Seattle native.
  In 1950, pregnant with twins, Mrs. Fisher returned to the U.S. and 
settled in Washington, DC. After the birth of her children, Susan and 
John, she worked on Capitol Hill for 3 years as a staffer for 
Representative Don Magnuson of Washington State. Later, as a free-lance 
publicist, she represented the National Ballet, the Institute of 
Contemporary Arts, and the National Symphony Orchestra, NSO, among many 
other organizations, and served as the NSO's public relations director.
  From 1962 until 1968, she worked as a speechwriter in the Commerce 
Department and in the summer of 1968, she served as press secretary to 
India Edwards, the special assistant to DNC Chairman John Bailey, and 
helped handle press for the Democratic National

[[Page S9404]]

Convention in Chicago. In the late 1960s, as a free-lance journalist, 
she saw several of her articles published in The Washington Star.
  A long-time resident of Washington's Cleveland Park neighborhood, 
Mrs. Fisher was member of the National Press Club, the Women's National 
Press Club, the American Newspaper Women's Club, Mortar Board, and 
Theta Sigma Phi, a journalism and communications professional 
organization.
  From Washington State to Washington, DC, from Paris to Chicago to the 
Halls of Congress and the National Press Club, Mary Jane Fisher was an 
admired and respected journalist. She approached every assignment with 
enthusiasm and determination to get the story right. I will miss my 
conversations with her, and I am certain that sentiment is echoed by 
hundreds across the Nation this week as we remember her, and offer our 
heartfelt condolences to her daughter Susan, her son John, son-in-law 
Brian, and granddaughters Jennifer and Karen.

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