[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 96 (Thursday, June 16, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4293-S4294]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      REMEMBERING MARY D. FERGUSON

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I wish to share with my colleagues the 
very sad news that Mary D. Ferguson, a legendary Kentucky journalist 
and a good friend of mine, has passed away. She departed this life last 
Thursday, June 9, in the town of Hopkinsville, KY, at the age of 82. 
She will be remembered and greatly missed by her family, many friends, 
and journalists throughout the Commonwealth.
  Mary was a pioneer as a female journalist in an era when women were 
not expected to enter that profession, but she did not let that deter 
her from doing what she had dreamed of since childhood. She got her 
first job in journalism when she was a freshman in college, working as 
the society editor at the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle.
  She also served as the news director for a Hopkinsville radio 
station, WHOP, before being hired as a reporter by the Kentucky New Era 
in 1962. There she remained for more than 50 years--as a reporter, 
columnist, and eventually as an unofficial historian for the region and 
fount of institutional knowledge for the newspaper. By the time she 
passed away, of course, she had been working there since before most of 
her coworkers were born.
  Mary touched the lives of thousands in Kentucky and beyond with her 
work for the New Era. Her stories gave voice to the people of her 
community, and she brought events of the world home for her readers. In 
covering events at Fort Campbell, KY, she wrote about Presidents 
spanning from Lyndon Johnson to George W. Bush. She covered 
gubernatorial inaugurations, crime, the courts, elections, and the 
arts.
  I got to know Mary back when I was first elected to statewide office. 
She interviewed me and was a part of editorial board meetings, which I 
frequently held with the New Era. Mary was a rarity in the fact that 
she was one of the few journalists who leaned Republican, although she 
always kept her reporting balanced. I certainly appreciated her support 
and encouragement throughout the years and grew to have great 
admiration and respect for this woman who was not afraid to chart her 
own path.
  Mary was the heart of the New Era newspaper and will be deeply missed 
by her colleagues and the hundreds of journalists who passed through 
that publication's offices over the five decades of her tenure. The 
paper established in 2005 the Mary D. Ferguson Award, given annually to 
the employee most committed to the quality of the newspaper. That 
tradition will continue after her death.
  Kentucky has lost one of its leading lights in journalism, and I have 
lost a friend. Elaine and I want to express our deepest condolences to 
Mary's family. She is survived by her husband, retired Kentucky State 
Police Trooper Russell Ferguson, her daughter Lee Ellen Ferguson Fish, 
and two grandchildren. Along with the Hopkinsville community, we stand 
by the Ferguson family and support them in their time of grief.
  The newspaper Mary Ferguson wrote for for 54 years, the New Era, 
published a remarkable article detailing her life and career. I ask 
unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Kentucky New Era, June 10, 2016]

         Trailblazing Journalist, Mary D. Ferguson, Dies at 82

                         (By Jennifer P. Brown)

       Hopkinsville, KY.--Mary D. Ferguson, a Kentucky New Era 
     staff writer and columnist who covered stories about farmers, 
     housewives, Army generals, American presidents and much more 
     in a career lasting more than 50 years, died Thursday morning 
     at a Hopkinsville nursing home. She was 82.
       A native of Trenton and longtime resident of Pembroke Road, 
     she lived just a few miles from the newspaper. She is 
     survived by her husband, retired Kentucky State Police 
     Trooper Russell Ferguson, and their daughter, Lee Ellen 
     Ferguson Fish.
       Ferguson was a trailblazer for women in news reporting.
       A 1952 graduate of Trenton High School in Todd County, she 
     moved to Clarksville when she started college at Austin Peay 
     State University. In the spring of her freshman year, she 
     applied for the society editor's job at the Clarksville Leaf-
     Chronicle newspaper

[[Page S4294]]

     and was hired on the spot. Years later, she said she was 
     shocked to get the job, but she stayed with the newspaper 
     until a year after she graduated.
       She then became the news director for WHOP. Walking from 
     store to store in downtown Hopkinsville, she delivered the 
     radio station's daily Shell-O-Gram, a promotional flyer for 
     Shell Oil that featured news headlines of the day. The radio 
     station, which was on South Virginia Street, had a mobile 
     unit set up in a station wagon, and Ferguson also broadcast 
     live stories from the field.
       The New Era hired her on February 5, 1962, to cover crime, 
     courts and Fort Campbell. She was the first female reporter 
     in the newsroom.
       Although the paper's owners had recruited her, it took a 
     while for the men in the newsroom to accept Ferguson. 
     Reminiscing last fall about her start at the New Era, she 
     remembered how her news judgment and writing style were 
     frequently criticized early on. Things began to shift in her 
     favor one day when a local judge publicly praised one of her 
     stories.
       Ferguson was on a first-name basis with several commanding 
     generals, and their family members, at Fort Campbell. She 
     also covered Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, 
     Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. 
     Bush at Fort Campbell or nearby communities. She filed 
     stories from the inaugurations of two Kentucky governors, 
     Edward T. ``Ned'' Breathitt and Louie B. Nunn.
       She loved the arts and was granted a back-stage interview 
     with the opera singer Marian Anderson at Fish University in 
     Nashville. Ferguson was so overcome with appreciation that 
     she broke down and cried as she approached the celebrity.
       As a general assignment reporter, Ferguson wrote a wide 
     range of stories, including murder investigations, businesses 
     opening and closing, fatal crashes, hospital expansions, 
     lawsuits, tobacco auctions, elections, floods, fires, high 
     school graduations, concerts and the deaths of many friends.
       Ferguson was among the New Era reporting team that covered 
     the aftermath of the Gander, Newfoundland, crash in December 
     1985 that killed 248 soldiers headed back to Fort Campbell 
     after a six-month deployment to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. 
     She was at Fort Campbell the day President Ronald Reagan and 
     first lady Nancy Reagan came to the post to console the 
     families.
       She rejected the idea of ever retiring, although she did 
     eventually scale back her hours and devoted her time mainly 
     to writing daily obituaries and a popular human-interest 
     column that ran on Saturdays. Even when cancer treatments 
     made it difficult for her to type, she continued to dictate a 
     weekly column to another staff member.
       She was rare among journalists with a career spanning more 
     than 60 years at two newspapers and the radio station.
       No one working in the New Era's newsroom today had been 
     born when Ferguson started working for the paper at its old 
     offices in downtown Hopkinsville. She experienced numerous 
     changes in the newspaper industry. She gave up her typewriter 
     for computers but never really accepted the internet as a 
     useful tool.
       New Era Publisher Taylor Hayes said he thought of Ferguson 
     as the newspaper's ``matriarch.'' Employees counted on her 
     frank opinion and advice.
       ``This classy lady provided such a footing to our company, 
     particularly in the newsroom, and her absence cannot be 
     easily grasped,'' Hayes said. ``She was a rock.''
       Ferguson drove a red Cadillac, voted Republican, loved big 
     friendly dogs, fed bread to fat squirrels in her yard, 
     laughed often, cooked like a pro and remembered names and old 
     tales that others forgot. She missed restaurants like 
     Charlie's Steakhouse and Bartholomew's when they closed. She 
     was partial to the Whistle Stop's chocolate glazed doughnuts. 
     Sushi and egg rolls were not her thing.
       She wore tailored dresses, cardigan sweaters, high heels 
     and pearls to work. When the newsroom eventually went smoke-
     free, she took her cigarette breaks wearing a mink coat on 
     the newspaper's loading dock, where she was likely to collect 
     a few story ideas from the pressmen or a truck driver.
       While the newsroom became younger and increasingly reliant 
     on the internet, she packed her desk drawers with old city 
     directories, history books and paper files. She could put her 
     hands on a photograph of an old general before a young editor 
     could even begin the search on Google.
       No one covering news in Hopkinsville today--not at the 
     newspaper and not at any of the radio stations--could match 
     her institutional knowledge of people and events that shaped 
     southern Pennyrile communities over the past 80 years.
       ``There are a rare class of people who, when they come into 
     your life, however it may be, you just feel lucky to have 
     known them,'' Editor Eli Pace said. ``Mary D. was tough as 
     nails, classy beyond description and just wonderful--and I 
     was lucky.''
       She was opinionated too. Once, when a new editor announced 
     that the New Era would begin re-running obituaries every time 
     the newspaper or a funeral home made a mistake because 
     readers liked to clip them out for family records, Ferguson 
     snapped, ``What are we, a newspaper or a scrapbook company?''
       Ferguson, who sometimes prayed for friends and co-workers 
     from her front porch swing in the evening, believed that her 
     best writing at the New Era came in a Christmas Eve column 
     she wrote about her father's dairy barn.
       The column included this: ``My memories were born in a 
     stable located on a hill just north of Trenton near the Todd-
     Christian county line. The wide front door opened to the 
     southwestern sky, and at night there was a star spectacle 
     that outshone the blinking of multi-colored Christmas lights 
     wrapped around a tree and bushes . . . The warmth, the 
     smells, the sound of a soft wind and stars in the sky--no 
     greater peace could be enjoyed.''
       Ferguson's last column was about the arrival of the first 
     hummingbird to her house at 2:30 p.m. April 16. Ever the 
     reporter, she had recorded the exact time and day.

                          ____________________