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“REMEMBERING MARY JANE FISHER” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the Senate section on pages S9403-S9404 on Sept. 24, 2008.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
REMEMBERING MARY JANE FISHER
Mr. CARDIN. Madam President, I wish to commemorate the wonderful life of my friend, Mary Jane Fisher, a greatly admired journalist and publicist who passed away last Sunday, September 14, in Washington, DC, at the age of 90.
Mary Jane was a dear friend whose life experiences were as varied as the people who knew and loved her. From 1976 to 2001, Mary Jane worked as the Washington correspondent for the National Underwriter, a publisher of insurance and financial services trade publications. Mrs. Fisher, who reported and wrote weekly columns for the company's property and casualty and health and life editions, was a well-known figure on Capitol Hill reporting on insurance activities. She was a frequent presence at hearings in the Ways and Means Committee, where I served for many of those years, and interviewed me often on health care and insurance matters.
A former National Underwriter editor once referred to Mary Jane as the ``Helen Thomas'' of the insurance trade press. Mrs. Fisher had seen Presidents, Senators, Representatives, lobbyists, and reporters come and go during her more than three decades of covering insurance issues in Washington. If a congressional committee debated legislation involving pensions, retirement issues or health insurance, you could count on seeing her at the press table.
During one particularly memorable Ways and Means hearing on Medicare prescription drug coverage, I watched from the dais as she beamed with pride. Sitting next to her on one side was her daughter, Susan, who has been my communications director for 22 years, and on the other sat her granddaughter Jennifer, who interned in the Ways and Means Democratic press office that summer.
Her storied career, however, began on the west coast. Born Mary Jane Johnson in Berkeley, CA, on December 31, 1917, she was raised in Seattle, WA. Mrs. Fisher graduated from Franklin High School in 1935 and attended the University of Washington, where she earned a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1939. After college, she worked as a reporter and editor for the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-
Intelligencer, and the Coos Bay World. In addition to reporting and editing in Coos Bay, in her spare time, Mrs. Fisher also served as forest fire spotter, looking for fires started by Japanese incendiary devices that had been carried across the Pacific via weather balloons.
Mary Jane, as a lieutenant in the Waves in World War II from December 1942 until January 1946, served as a public information officer at the Sand Point Naval Air Station in Seattle. In 1946, she was assigned to the staff handling publicity at the very first meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco.
In 1946, after a whirlwind courtship of several weeks, she married Joel H. Fisher, a Washington attorney, who was then an assistant solicitor in the Commerce Department. They were married in Des Moines, IA, and Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace served as the best man. When her husband became the European counsel for the American Joint Distribution Committee, Mrs. Fisher moved to Paris, where she befriended Alice B. Toklas, a fellow Seattle native.
In 1950, pregnant with twins, Mrs. Fisher returned to the U.S. and settled in Washington, DC. After the birth of her children, Susan and John, she worked on Capitol Hill for 3 years as a staffer for Representative Don Magnuson of Washington State. Later, as a free-lance publicist, she represented the National Ballet, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and the National Symphony Orchestra, NSO, among many other organizations, and served as the NSO's public relations director.
From 1962 until 1968, she worked as a speechwriter in the Commerce Department and in the summer of 1968, she served as press secretary to India Edwards, the special assistant to DNC Chairman John Bailey, and helped handle press for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In the late 1960s, as a free-lance journalist, she saw several of her articles published in The Washington Star.
A long-time resident of Washington's Cleveland Park neighborhood, Mrs. Fisher was member of the National Press Club, the Women's National Press Club, the American Newspaper Women's Club, Mortar Board, and Theta Sigma Phi, a journalism and communications professional organization.
From Washington State to Washington, DC, from Paris to Chicago to the Halls of Congress and the National Press Club, Mary Jane Fisher was an admired and respected journalist. She approached every assignment with enthusiasm and determination to get the story right. I will miss my conversations with her, and I am certain that sentiment is echoed by hundreds across the Nation this week as we remember her, and offer our heartfelt condolences to her daughter Susan, her son John, son-in-law Brian, and granddaughters Jennifer and Karen.
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