Knight, Mary, 1898-1996

Mary Lamar Knight McConnell, author, journalist, and lecturer, was born in 1899 and was the daughter of Georgia historian Lucian Lamar Knight. She married Felton McDonnell (Mac) in 1973 and moved to Loveland, Ohio. She was one of the first woman news correspondents for United Press International and the first woman on their Paris staff (1930-1935). Afterward, Knight traveled in the Far East, then worked in the U.S. Office of War Censorship through the end of Worl War II. She earned an undergraduate degree (1922) from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, and a degree in librarianship from San Jose (California) State College (1968). Knight's thesis ("The Chinese Fox") for her degree in librarianship, published as a children's fantasy, THE FOX THAT WANTED NINE GOLDEN TAILS (1969), had been published in Tokyo, Japan (1955) under Knight's Japanese name, Kishi Mariko.