RUTH BALDWIN (COWAN) NASH, 1901-1993

Ruth Cowan, the only daughter of William Henry and Ida (Baldwin) Cowan, was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on June 15, probably in 1901. Although the family was not Catholic, IBC, a former teacher, placed RBCN in St. Mary's Academy, a convent school. RBCN attended the school until the death of her father, a mining prospector, in 1911; she and her mother then moved to Florida to establish a homestead. After a few years they returned to Salt Lake City, and RBCN re-enrolled in St. Mary's. After she completed the 7th and 8th grades, they moved to San Antonio, TX., where RBCN boarded in the Ursuline Academy; she never lived with her mother again. She later worked in the book section of a department store while attending St. Michael's (1916), and then transferred to public school.

While attending Main Avenue High School (1917-1919), RBCN was invited by Elva Cunningham, president of the San Antonio Parent Teachers Association, to live with the Cunningham family (Elva, husband John, three sons, and Elva's sister, Mary Carter). The Cunninghams became a second family. After completing high school in two years, RBCN attended the University of Texas at Austin (1919-1923), working her way through with a variety of jobs. While there she added the middle name "Barbara," but later changed it to "Baldwin" to please her mother.

Following her graduation in 1923, she again lived with the Cunninghams and taught high school for two years before embarking on her journalism career. Beginning as a weekend movie reviewer, RBCN soon became a reporter for the San Antonio Evening News, as well as a free-lancer -- using the name Baldwin Cowan -- for The Houston Chronicle and other papers. Her coverage of the 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston resulted in a job offer from United Press (UP). When her superiors at UP discovered that "Baldwin Cowan" was a woman, they transferred her briefly to Austin to cover the state legislature until it adjourned, at which time she was let go; UP refused to have women on its staff. She promptly contacted Kent Cooper of the Associated Press (AP), who offered her a job. She worked as an AP reporter for the next 27 years, covering a wide range of people and events, including gangsters in Chicago, Washington social life, Eleanor Roosevelt's press conferences, and various "human interest" stories. She is perhaps best known for her work as an overseas war correspondent during World War II.

After covering the introduction and eventual passage (in May 1942) of the bill establishing the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACs, which became the Women's Army Corps, or WACs, in September 1943), RBCN requested that she be sent to accompany the first WAAC contingent to go overseas. She received permission from long-time friend and fellow Texan Oveta Culp Hobby, director of the WAACs; AP approval followed. RBCN and Inez Robb of the International News Service, the first women to be accredited as U.S. Army war correspondents, were required to wear military uniforms, and were subject to military rules and regulations. In January 1943 the contingent landed in North Africa. In May, RBCN moved to England, where she covered the arrival of WAACs in London, and preparations for the invasion of the continent; she took several trips to Normandy during the early days of the landing. In September 1944 she moved to France; she was in Paris during the liberation.

Before returning home in April 1945, RBCN covered stories from Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, the Riviera, and London. Many of her dispatches were about women and the war effort: WACs, nurses, English and Polish women in the military, and women in the French resistance. She also wrote of wounded soldiers, military field hospitals, new treatment methods and medicines, and the effects of war on civilians. In addition to the many limitations placed on women correspondents by the War Department and individual Army officers, at times RBCN encountered considerable resistance from the AP itself. She wrote the AP to protest (see #101), and later recounted some of her difficulties in a memoir (#453-454) and interviews (#6-9at). Her determination and resourcefulness are described in books by Julia Edwards and Lilya Wagner (see below).

After two years and four months overseas, RBCN was re-assigned to AP's Washington bureau. After the war RBCN covered the Pentagon, the House Armed Services Committee, and other military news. Eventually she resumed coverage of the White House, visits of foreign heads of state and ambassadors, and of what she called the "woman's angle": women's organizations, women in politics, social news, etc. She was active in several professional associations, including the Women's National Press Club, which she served as president, 1947-1948. Founded in 1919, the WNPC functioned as the women's equivalent of the National Press Club and the Gridiron Club, from which women were excluded. From a club specifically for "newspaper women," it evolved along with the changing news media to an association for "women professionally engaged in the gathering and dissemination of news." The WNPC decided to include men in 1971, and was renamed the Washington Press Club (WPC); it merged with the National Press Club in 1985. The WPC transferred its assets to the Washington Press Club Foundation, "a nonprofit corporation that exists to promote the ideals of equality and excellence that inspired the initial founders of the WNPC." The WNPC sponsored luncheons for members and guests featuring newsworthy figures (e.g., General George C. Marshall, Barbara Ward, James Forrestal, Eleanor Roosevelt), and held an annual "stunt party" that was well-attended by the Washington political elite, including President Truman and his family. In June 1956, RBCN had to retire, as AP pension rules required that women retire at 55, though men could work until they were 65. She married Bradley De Lamater Nash (Harvard AB 23), an expert in government operations who served in every administration from Coolidge through Eisenhower. They moved to High Acres Farm in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, but RBCN's retirement did not last long. In May 1957 she became a public relations consultant to the Republican National Committee, and a year later followed Bertha Adkins (BA) to the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), serving as BA's confidential administrative assistant until retiring once more in January 1961.

BA, formerly assistant chairman of the RNC, assumed her HEW post in August 1958. Her areas of responsibility included the Federal Council on Aging (established in 1956); the Committee for Rural Development (established in Oct. 1959); the Interdepartmental Committee to Coordinate Urban Area Assistance Programs; the Joint Committee for Rural Development and Urban Area Assistance Programs; and the White House Conference on Children and Youth (WHCCY) and White House Conference on Aging. RBCN's expertise and thoroughness in helping to develop and monitor agency policies, while foreseeing the political and social implications of those policies, is portrayed in Series VII. During this time (1958-1961), RBCN also served on the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS).

In retirement, RBCN was active in various organizations in the Harper's Ferry area, and traveled to Eastern Europe in 1969; BDN was mayor of Harper's Ferry for many years. In 1984, the Nashes gave 50 acres to the National Park Service (NPS) for a wildlife preserve in Harper's Ferry, dedicated to RBCN and Senator Jennings Randolph's late wife, Mary Babb Randolph. RBCN also worked to make High Acres Farm into a bird and wildlife sanctuary, which the Nashes plan to bequeath to the NPS and the Department of Natural Resources in West Virginia. Ruth Cowan Nash died in her sleep of natural causes on February 5, 1993.

For additional biographical information, see #1-10; Julia Edwards, Women of the World: The Great Foreign Correspondents (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1988); Libya Wagner, Women War Correspondents of World War II (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989); and entries in various Who's Who . The professional papers of Bradley D. Nash are in the Herbert Hoover Library in West Branch, Iowa.