Mary Kay Doody

My, how the months have flown by. It's fall and almost winter in the Methow Valley and I still think of Mary Kay everyday. I remember the times we shared on Whidbey and the walks and talks. I pulled out my old hiking boots (very old) and hoped I would find some sand from Ebby's Landing on them. Alas, no sand - just too many miles and too many hikes since Whidbey. I can never thank Mary Kay for the richness she brought to my life by teaching me so much about nature and the wonderful world surrounding me.

As well as admiring her as a journalist and a person, we will always love and appreciate Mary Kay for her kindness to us when we were young and building a cabin on South Whidbey. She took us in to her home (out of the 1965 VW microbus, and with our 2 dogs) and let us live with her while we finished building. I know that she considered John to be family, but the wife and the dogs, too- !
She was very generous to us.
I'm adding a favorite photo of Mary Kay, John's mother Travis Foote, and our children, Jesse Travis and Leah Claire.

Mary Kay Doody was a reporter.

I mean that in the best sense of the word. An old-fashioned, hard-nosed beat reporter, the kind of bulldog who would trail a story for days, pepper everyone in sight with questions, slog through reams of paperwork and fine print and then emerge with the facts, and nothing but the facts.

Her passing this week may have closed a career, but the legend lives on.

Long before she helped launch the Whidbey Examiner, then led it for many years, paying me far too often to prattle on about movies in a weekly video column, we were office mates at the Whidbey News-Times from 1992-1994.

I was 21 and pretending to be a Sports Editor, flying by the seat of my pants after harassing the paper's legendary editor, Fred Obee, into giving me the position minus a college degree. Perhaps to teach me a lesson, he assigned me to a desk between the two polar opposites of the newsroom, Island Living Editor Ellen Slater, an oasis of calm in a newsroom fueled by caffeine, cigarette smoke and rubber band wars, and Mary Kay.

Frankly, she scared the crud out of me at times. Get her wound up on deadline day and the wall between our cubicles would shake like the dinosaurs from "Jurassic Park" were on a rampage. Pounding away at her keyboard with a manic intensity, she would phone up sources, and, when they answered, bellow, "I can't talk to you! I'm on deadline!" and then slam the phone down, forgetting she has initiated the call.

Like a heat seeking missile, she plunged after stories and, when I wasn't trying to keep my computer from vibrating off my desk from one of her keyboard-inflicted earthquakes, she inspired me. This was how a grown-up, professional reporter was supposed to conduct themselves, and the few times I accidentally stumbled across an important story on the sports desk, I took my lead from her.

Never let the bums get away with anything. A newshound's mantra, if there ever was one.

So, next time you walk past City Hall, or wander through a courtroom, or even slightly think about calling a politician on the carpet, stop and tip your coffee cup first and pour a bit on the ground for a reporter who ain't around and remember -- a legend walked this way once.

Mary Kay and I worked together for close to 14 years at the Whidbey News-Times. She was one of the hardest working, ethically pure journalists I have ever known. She worked late into the night countless times to chronicle the antics of a politically fractious community, but saw real progress in the creation of Classic U Forest and Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve. When historians of the future tune in to determine how these things came about, no doubt a prime source of their research will be the blow by blow descriptions Mary Kay labored over. She was a true friend and a valued co-worker. She had a huge impact on the community she served. She will be missed.

I have such warm memories of sharing animal stories with Mary Kay. Nobody was more passionate or knowledgable about the natural world than Mary Kay. She was an incredibly thoughtful, caring person--simply a treasure of a human being.

Mary Kay supported my sobriety over 30 years and was so kind to me when I lost my stepmother. Friends and family meant everything to her. I last talked to her through a curtain/room divider at Whidbey Island Manor before Christmas a few years ago. I took her a calendar, chewing gum and a newspaper. I bet she threw her head back and gave a loud laugh to see three things she had no use for arrive by special delivery. She was feisty! I will miss her spirit.