By AL THOMPSON
Scripps Howard News Service

	LUNCHEON

Mary Garber is still breaking barriers at age 89.

Garber, whose sportswriting career spans more than 50 years, all of them at newspapers in Winston-Salem, N.C., was named the 2005 Red Smith Award winner at this year's APSE convention in Orlando. It is the first time in the award's 25-year history it has gone to a female sportswriter.

Garber, in failing health, was unable to attend the convention. But she did make an appearance on a short videotaped message.

She called receiving the Red Smith Award "the highest honor I've had in 50 years of sportswriting. ... It all goes back to my newspaper, who, after the war, gave me the chance to write sports ... because they thought it was the fair thing to do."

Garber scoffed at those who think newspapers are on the way out, noting that "every day at the (Winston-Salem) Journal we get calls from readers who say, 'I heard this on the radio' or 'I heard this on television.

Is it true?' When they really want to know they turn to us because they know we will be accurate. ... We accept this responsibility as a challenge."

David Manning / David Manning Photography Dr. Daniel Brown of Twin Falls, Idaho, accepted the Red Smith Award on behalf of Mary Garber. Brown is Garber's nephew.

Always a sports fan, Garber started her newspaper career at the Twin Cities Sentinel in Winston-Salem in 1941 as a society writer. She switched to her real love in 1944 when military service depleted the men on the sports staff. She briefly left sports when the men returned at the end of World War II, but talked her way back into the department in 1946.

She never left, covering virtually every prep and college sport — including the prestigious Atlantic Coast Conference — from then until her 'retirement' in 1986 at age 70. Even in retirement she kept working as a freelance writer for her newspaper.

Accepting the award on her behalf was Garber's nephew, Dr. Daniel Brown of Twin Falls, Idaho.

Dr. Brown said he tries to get back to Winston-Salem a couple of times a year and almost always runs into someone "Mary had written about 30 or 40 years ago."

Almost invariably, he said, they fumble around in a wallet or purse for a faded and torn copy of an article she had written. "She had a profound impact on a huge number of people," he said.

Dr. Brown noted that of all the sweeping changes that occurred during Garber's long career, one of the most profound was integration. And here too she was a pioneer.

In the 1940s, in the heart of the segregated South, Garber went to her editors and was given permission to cover sports at the black high schools in the community.

"This was a big deal for the black community in Winston-Salem," Dr. Brown said. His voice choked with emotion, he told of one incident when, as the only white person at an event, Garber overhead two boys talking about her.

"Who is she?" one asked. "What's she doing here?"

David Manning / David Manning Photography Mary Garber was unable to attend the Red Smith Award luncheon, but she delivered a poignant speech via a video-taped message.

"She's a sportswriter," said the other, "and if you do something good she'll write about you."

Los Angeles Times sports editor Bill Dwyre, himself a Red Smith Award winner and former APSE president, recalled talking with Tracy Dodds, another former APSE president, about the battles of female sportswriters such as Stephanie Salter, Joan Ryan and Leslie Visser in the 1970s and early 1980s to break into what had long been a men's-only field.

"I remember Tracy Dodds ... saying she had just read about somebody named Mary Garber and as we talked about it we both realized that here was truly a pioneer," Dwyre said, "well before any of those I mentioned."

Equally generous was Billie Jean King, who has blazed a few trails of her own over the years.

"Sadly, there were no female sportswriters (on hand) when I faced Bobby Riggs (at the Astrodome in 1973)," King said in a prepared statement. "It was a sign of the times and I have always wished that Mary would have been there because her take on that night would have been special.

"Congratulations, Mary. This is another first for you. ... Once again you lead the way for all of us who will continue to open doors for others."

 Back to index