The Roanoke Times | File

Margie Fisher

1936-2010

• Guest book: Leave condolences or share memories of Margie Fisher
• Memorial service: 11:30 a.m. April 19, Roanoke’s Colonial Avenue Baptist Church.
• Read Fisher's final column (June 2001)

Margie Fisher, a feisty, pioneering journalist who helped open the doors of the Virginia General Assembly press room to women, died Friday in Winston-Salem, N.C.

She was 73 and had suffered from dementia.

Fisher retired from The Roanoke Times in 2001 after more than four decades, the last 26 years primarily reporting and then writing editorials about politicians and the General Assembly.

In the mid-1970s, she and a handful of other women became the first females to cover state politics full time.

"She was quite a pioneer -- not just a pioneer, but a damned good reporter, male or female -- but a pioneer when it was tough to be a woman covering the General Assembly," said former state Del. Clifton "Chip" Woodrum of Roanoke.

Woodrum served 24 years in the House of Delegates, retiring in 2003.

"Marge covered us warts and all, sometimes when we'd just as soon not have heard about them. She was a great person."

Another admirer was Dudley "Buzz" Emick, who was in the middle of his two decades in the state Senate when Fisher arrived.

"I've always been partial to reporters who will not take whatever politicians said as fact," Emick said, praising Fisher's persistence. "They're a dying breed, as I see them, who say to a politician, 'I read that, but what about this?' I admired that. It is a good trait to have as reporter."

Fisher, born in Roanoke and a graduate of Jefferson High School, got her first job at the newspaper as a clerk in the advertising department in 1955.

She left twice to bear her two sons, Michael and Jeffery, who survive her.

She came back in 1959 as what she later described as "a glorified copy girl" in the newsroom of The World-News, the company's afternoon newspaper. She got a chance to write a few stories, and in 1960 she had moved into the reporting track that almost everyone of her gender was assigned -- the "Women's Department."

There she covered such things as the Miss Virginia Pageant, "fetes, soirees and nuptials of (all-white) debutantes and ladies who lunch," Fisher wrote in a column near her retirement.

Through the 1960s, she kept picking up prizes for her reporting and became an activist for women in journalism.

While fighting for such privileges as wearing pants to work, she also helped form the Virginia Press Women association. Fisher served as its president from 1969-71, and was named its Woman of the Year in 1972.

But it was her transition to political writing that had the most impact on Virginia journalism.

In a column a month before her retirement in 2001, Fisher described how her first major assignment was "a result of gender bias. That is, a hometown kickoff for Republican Linwood Holton's '69 campaign for governor was deemed by this newspaper's editors to be entirely too precious and silly for the paper's male reporters to waste time on -- so they sent me.

"The event, in the front yard at the Holtons' Roanoke home, was actually more costume party than political rally," she wrote.

Tongue only partly in cheek, she continued, "But I did such a good job writing about it that Holton won -- becoming Virginia's first GOP governor since the 1880s, and ushering in a new era of racial equality and two-party competitiveness."

In 1975, the paper sent her to Richmond to work full time. While some other women had covered the part-time General Assembly's sessions before, that year there were no more than two or three assigned permanently.

They endured the insults of their male colleagues -- "news hens," they were -- while proving their abilities.

Margaret Edds, of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, arrived soon after Fisher and worked alongside her for years. In 1976, Edds recalled, Fisher and June Nicholson of the Alexandria Gazette found out about a regular card game called Mullet going on during slow periods of the legislative session.

"Needless to say, only men got to join in the game," Edds wrote in an e-mail, "which could go on for hours in the press room and often drew a Who's Who of influential state officials and gubernatorial confidantes, as well as reporters. Never mind that a bit of illegal gambling on state property was part of the mix.

"Fisher and Nicholson weren't amused by the cozy, insider camaraderie, and they correctly forecast that Virginians would share their disdain. Stories were written and press conferences held. A reluctant Capitol establishment bid Mullet farewell," Edds wrote.

"Margie may have been a scourge to the stifling, closed political world that greeted her in Richmond almost four decades ago. But she was a hero to those of us fortunate to follow in her wake."

Fisher "was generally recognized as the dean of the statehouse press corps throughout the 1980s," according to The Associated Press.

She knew every important state politician of the time, frequently scooping larger papers with bigger staffs.

By 1990, she was ready to come back home and accepted a job as an editorial writer in the Roanoke office.

Tommy Denton, the editorial page chief when Fisher retired, said, "Margie was one of the real pros and had the pulse of Richmond as very few people I knew. She wrote with authority, from personal experience. She was a true gift to the editorial voice of The Roanoke Times."

In 2000, Fisher received the George Mason Award for her "significant, lasting contribution to Virginia journalism" from the Virginia chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

The next year, age 65 rolled around, new technology was driving her crazy, and Fisher decided to retire.

In no surprise to anyone who knew her, she resisted an elaborate farewell and allowed only a small reception in the tiny editorial board offices. She departed with her own words in a completely unsentimental column, pondering whether she should spend retirement learning to hang glide, fulfilling her dream of becoming a Radio City Music Hall Rockette, or perhaps returning to the legislature as a "geriatric page."

"Or maybe I'll fall back on my original game plan, and just sit around the house in my pajamas, not wearing a bra or pantyhose for days at a time, and take naps." After quoting Scarlett O'Hara -- "Oh, fiddle-dee-dee. I'll worry about that tomorrow" -- she signed off.

"Margie Fisher has left the building."

The House of Delegates adjourned Monday night in Fisher's honor and memory. House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, made the motion.

A memorial service for Fisher will be held April 19 at 11:30 a.m in Roanoke's Colonial Avenue Baptist Church.