Fleeson, Doris, 1901-1970

Journalist; interviewee married Dan Kimball.

Doris Fleeson was a newspaper reporter and syndicated columnist in Washington D.C. for nearly 40 years, beginning in 1933, and was known as an aggressive political reporter. Fleeson was born in Sterling, Kansas on May 20, 1901. Fleeson graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in journalism in 1923. During her time at KU, Fleeson was a correspondent for the University Daily Kansan; her first newspaper job was with The Pittsburg (Kan.) Sun. Fleeson was a member of newspaper staffs in both Evanston, Illinois, and Long Island, New York before obtaining a postion at the New York Daily News. Within a few years she was assigned to the newspaper's Albany bureau and became acquainted with Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose Administration she later covered in Washington. On September 28, 1930, she was married to John O'Donnell, a fellow Daily News reporter. Their daughter, also named Doris, was born two years later. Fleeson joined her husband in The Daily News' Washington Bureau in 1933. Together they started the "Capitol Stuff" column. At one time, Fleeson was the sole permanent woman member of the press entourage who accompanied President Roosevelt on his campaign tours.

Fleeson and O'Donnell divorced in 1942. The next year Fleeson left The Daily News and went to Europe as a war correspondent for The Woman's Home Companion. After the war she returned to Washington and began a column on political affairs, which appeared first in The Washington Star. In 1958, Fleeson married Dan Kimball, who was President Harry Truman's Secretary of the Navy from 1951-53, and also President and later Chairman of the Board for Aerojet General Corporation until 1969. By the time Fleeson went into semi-retirement in 1967, her twice-a-week column was distributed by United Features Syndicate, Inc., to 90 newspapers. Her reporting over the years earned her a number of awards and citations, including the Raymond Clapper award in 1954 from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. A champion of women's rights, she was an active member of the Women's National Press Club and an inveterate foe of the National Press Club, which did not admit women members.