Your qualifications sound very good to me except for the fact that you are a woman…”

This is the opening to a rejection letter received by Lucile McDonald, who was the first woman copy editor in the Pacific Northwest, the first woman news reporter in Oregon, the first woman overseas foreign correspondent for a US newspaper, the first American woman news reporter in South America, and the second woman journalist in Alaska. Lucile was born in Portland in 1898.

Her first newspaper job was in Bend, Oregon in 1917. She began by selling advertising, but soon ended up as editor when all the men on staff were called to serve in World War I. After Oregon, she traveled to Argentina, then north to Alaska, and then to on to Europe. While overseas, she often worked as a foreign correspondent for newspapers back in the States.

During World War II, Lucile began working for the Seattle Times. After she “retired” there, she started writing a weekly column on history for the Bellevue Journal American. Lucile wrote 44 books and hundreds of newspaper articles over the course of her career. Many of her historical writings are still used as sources by researchers today.

This information and image were provided by the Eastside Heritage Center. To learn more about Bellevue and Eastside history, contact the Eastside Heritage Center at 425-450-1049 or visitwww.EastsideHeritageCenter.org.