She was a Pulitizer Prize winning political columnist who covered Washington, D.C. for over 50 years. But what I saw that day at the Malpensa Airport complex in Milano, Italy was an 83-year-old woman struggling mightily with her luggage while people nearly trampled her. I asked her if she needed help and she smiled. My son took her bags up a flight of stairs and we made sure she found the ticket counter that had eluded her. I introduced myself and she reciprocated. “Mary McGrory” was a name I knew from her right-on perspectives on Vietnam, Watergate, and Iraq…all mistakes.
A week after meeting her in Milano, life In the United States was upended by 9/11. Eventually, I sent a note to her at the Washington Post asking if she had arrived home in one piece. She replied with an old-fashioned letter of kindness (see photo). I marveled at how it was typed perfectly and how proper it was in style. I kept it to remind me of one person’s generosity of thought–this dynamic is hard to achieve in the current world of emails.
Mary McGrory died in 2004 at the age of 85.
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