Sarah McClendon is one of the nation's most prominent women journalists. She evokes such strong feelings, both positive and negative, among her colleagues that I was excited and anxious to meet this woman. We set a meeting to get acquainted with one another at the National Press Club (and she missed it.) She felt very bad about forgetting the lunch and quickly set up a second appointment. She was the best source of information about herself, generously loaning me a file of clippings about herself, videotapes of television interviews, and on the promise of secrecy, a copy of her revised "My Ten Presidents" to draw on. My questions were also developed through talking to Eileen Shanahan, Peggy Simpson, and Sarah Fritz, who are fellow women journalists in Washington, D.C., and have heard "Sarah McClendon stories" for years. Another very helpful informant was Donald Ritchie, associate historian in the Senate Historical Office and author of Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents.

We held the first three interviews in her townhouse in Woodley Park. Then, primarily due to her declining health, she moved to an apartment in the Kennedy Warren where we held the video interview and the final interview.

I found her anxious and eager to talk. And she is tireless. Scheduling two- to three-hour segments with her was a challenge because she is still writing a column for several (I could never pin her down to how many) Texas newspapers and doing a radio program at six a.m. It wasn't unusual to be interrupted by phone calls relating to a story she was writing. And we easily filled the time before and after interviews with spirited discussion on current events.

It is clear that writing and reporting is her life. Even when we talked about when she would quit the business, she responded with a story about someone who was still working on her deathbed.

Margot H. Knight
December 1990