Bragging on a Family Member and Her Second Career

12/8/2014

Kathleen O. McElroy, Ph. D.

Kathleen McElroy used to be the deputy sports editor at the Times. She was calm and smart and knew her sports, including the one called foo’ball. She is, after all, from Texas.

She was running our Olympic bureau in Atlanta in 1996 when the bomb went off after midnight, and she took charge, dispatching us into the darkness and the confusion.

Later she moved up at the Times, editing the Sunday and Monday editions. She was the duty officer when the Columbia exploded in 2003.

Somewhere along the line, she became part of our family, either my third sister or my third daughter -- not that she lacks for family, with sisters galore and the memory of Lucinda and George McElroy, both formidable.

Kathleen’s middle initial is O. Not everybody knows that it stands for Oveta, as in Oveta Culp Hobby, who operated the Houston Post for decades – and under whose leadership George McElroy became the Post’s first African-American columnist.

We always figured Kathleen was one of those out-of-towners who arrive in New York, scout out the restaurants and shops, discover a nice apartment, and stay forever. They are some of the best New Yorkers. But foo’ball may have been a tipoff. She is a Southwestern person.

Kathleen chose to leave the Times, earning a scholarship to the University of Texas. This fall she defended her dissertation -- "Somewhere Between 'Us' and 'Them' -- Black Columnists and Their Role in Shaping Racial Discourse" -- and received her Ph. D. She is now teaching journalism at Oklahoma State University, with emphasis on the African-American experience.

The other day Kathleen sent me a text message that said, “I want to make a difference.” We miss her at family gatherings, and expeditions around the city for the perfect barbecue or the perfect curry. She will make a difference.

University of Texas, Fall, 2014

Pete Bodo

12/8/2014 03:04:15 am

My, my, it reminds me how much fun it was to write for Kathleen back in the days of the "Outdoors" column, and its not supposed to be that way, right? You picked your family well, George!

George Vecsey

12/8/2014 04:47:52 am

First she would improve our copy, and then she would cook up some Texas chili -- remember the fest during the Open when she was in Forest Hills?

Corinna link

12/8/2014 04:08:04 am

Pop,

Thanks for sharing the good news about Kathleen! I had no idea her middle name was after Oveta Culp Hobby -- what a newspaper pedigree Kathleen has! She will love Oklahoma -- and being a journalism professor! And she will be so good at it! Her students have no idea how lucky they are! While we miss Kathleen here in the Northeast, we couldn't be happier for her success in her second career!

Corinna

George Vecsey

12/8/2014 04:53:01 am

George McElroy was very accomplished -- came out of the service, got himself hired by the Post, wrote a weekly column about real life for many years. (the link goes into detail). I find it fascinating that the infant with the middle name of Oveta came to fulfill the prophecy by becoming a journalist. I had lunch with him at Clyde Drexler's place in Houston. Formidable man.

Earl Wilson

12/8/2014 04:55:54 am

With Kathleen's busy sked during her time in New York City, she always found time to play tennis with a group of us. Tremendous player and always thought she was from New York with her city knowledge.

George Vecsey

12/8/2014 05:06:38 am

Earl, thanks. It's like an old O Henry short story. The person who knows New York so well is actually from Houston.
She would say she wasn't a good player...just hits the ball. Right.
GV

Kathleen McElroy

12/8/2014 08:32:36 am

Thanks, all, for your kind words! It took a global village for me to get this far, and all of you helped. Now let me know what I can do for you as we try to make the world a better place!

Harvey Araton

12/13/2014 03:37:49 am

Congrats, Kathleen. You've always made a difference

आशिकी २ link

9/9/2016 10:44:31 am

What a fantastic news regarding Olympian . Let me know you that there are lot many Olympian available in India but because of low facilities they could not show up their performance. One person loves game but after not having facilities turned to music composer.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Bragging on a Family Member and Her Second Career

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