Heritage Mourns Loss of Journalist Mary Lou Forbes

Ed Feulner / June 29, 2009

 I was saddened to hear yesterday of the passing late Saturday of Mary Lou Forbes, who first provided a much-needed canvas for conservative opinion and policy solutions more than a quarter-century ago, as editor of the Commentary pages of The Washington Times. She relished that job until she collapsed two weeks ago under the weight of an undiagnosed cancer.

Mary Lou was more than a good journalist, although she got a kick out of showing the men’s club at the old Washington Evening Star that she could report as fast and as well as any of them. That’s just what she did in the late 1950s, during her Pulitzer-winning coverage of the school desegregation fight in Virginia.

More importantly, Ludy was a good person: imaginative, creative and principled. Those qualities, joined to discipline, formidable work habits, and high standards, made her a force within the conservative movement as the Reagan revolution gathered steam. (more…)