Pioneer Vietnam War journalist Morrissy Merick dies at 83 – Chico Enterprise-Record
Pioneer Vietnam War journalist Morrissy Merick…
PUBLISHED: May 8, 2017 at 4:02 pm | UPDATED: April 20, 2018 at 4:56 am
NAPLES, Fla. (AP)  Anne Morrisy Merick, who successfully fought for equal treatment of female reporters during the Vietnam War, has died. She was 83.
She and Overseas Weekly editor Ann Bryan Mariano organized the half-dozen female reporters covering the war to challenge Westmoreland’s order. They appealed to the Defense Department, which overrode Westmoreland.
”An edict like Westmoreland’s would prohibit women from covering the war. It was a knockout blow to our careers. We had to fight,” wrote Morrissy Merick in the book she co-authored in 2002 with eight colleagues, “War Torn: Stories of War From the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam.” Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer was one of the co-authors.
Morrissy Merick gained national attention in 1954 when she became the first female sports editor of Cornell University’s student newspaper. “This sports writing doll breached the last bastion of masculinity left standing this side of the shower room,” Famed sports columnist Red Smith wrote.
ABC hired her in 1961 as an associate producer, where she covered the civil rights movement and the space program. She worked for nine months for ABC in Vietnam. While there, she met her husband, U.S. News and World Report reporter Wendell “Bud” Merick. She stayed with him in Vietnam until 1973, when the magazine closed its bureau. He died in 1988.