He led the roomful of reporters in singing “Happy Birthday to You” and gave her cupcakes. As it happened, it was the president's birthday too, his 48th.
Thomas was at the forefront of women's achievements in journalism. She was one of the first female reporters to break out of the White House “women's beat”—the soft stories about presidents' kids, wives, their teas and their hairdos—and cover the hard news on an equal footing with men.
She became the first female White House bureau chief for a wire service when UPI named her to the position in 1974.
She was also the first female officer at the National Press Club, where women had once been barred as members and she had to fight for admission into the 1959 luncheon speech where Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev warned: “We will bury you.”
The belligerent Khrushchev was an unlikely ally in one sense. He had refused to speak at any Washington venue that excluded women, she said.
She also pushed open the doors for women at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. At her urging, Kennedy refused to attend the 1962 dinner unless it was open to women for the first time.
