AUSTIN -- Molly Ivins, whose biting columns mixed liberal populism with an irreverent Texas wit, died Wednesday at her home in Austin after an up-and-down, seven-year battle with breast cancer. She was 62.
Ms. Ivins, the Star-Telegram's political columnist for nine years ending in 2001, had written for The New York Times, the Dallas Times-Herald and Time magazine and had been a sought-after pundit on television talk shows where she provided a Texas slant on issues ranging from President Bush's pedigree to the culture wars rooted in the 1960s.
"She was magical in her writing," said Mike Blackman, a former Star-Telegram executive editor who hired Ms. Ivins at the Austin bureau in 1992, a few months after the Times-Herald folded. "She could turn a phrase in such a way that a pretty hard-hitting point didn't hurt so bad."
Ms. Ivins, a California native who moved to Houston as a child with her family, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999. Two years later, after enduring a radical mastectomy and chemotherapy, doctors told her she had a 70 percent chance of remaining cancer-free for five years. At the time, she said she liked the odds.
But the cancer recurred in 2003 and again last year. In recent weeks, she had suspended her twice-weekly column for Creators Syndicate, allowing guest writers to use the space while she underwent further treatment. She made a brief return to writing in mid-January, urging readers to resist President Bush's increase in the number of troops in Iraq. She likened her call to an old-fashioned "newspaper crusade."
"We are the people who run this country," Ms. Ivins said in the column published in the Jan. 14 edition of the Star-Telegram. "We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war.
"Raise hell," she continued. "Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and are trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge."
She ended the piece by endorsing last Saturday's peace march in Washington: "We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'"
Ms. Ivins died at 5:24 p.m. Wednesday at her home in central Austin, representatives of her family said.
President Bush called Ms. Ivins a "Texas original" in a statement Wednesday.
"I respected her convictions, her passionate belief in the power of words, and her ability to turn a phrase. She fought her illness with that same passion. Her quick wit and commitment to her beliefs will be missed. Laura and I send our condolences to Molly Ivins' family and friends."
The spice of Texas
Born Mary Tyler Ivins on Aug. 30, 1944, in Monterey, Calif., Ms. Ivins was raised in the upscale River Oaks section of Houston. She earned her journalism degree at elite Smith College in Massachusetts in 1966.
She later earned a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
She ventured to Minnesota, taking a job as a police reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune.
Growing weary of the winters in the Upper Midwest and missing the spice of Texas food and its politics, Ms. Ivins moved to Austin to become co-editor of the Texas Observer, long considered the state's liberal conscience.
Nadine Eckhardt, the former wife of the late Texas novelist Billy Lee Bramer and who later married former U.S. Rep. Bob Eckhardt, said Ms. Ivins soon became a fixture in the Austin political and cocktail party scene in the early 1970s.
"That's where she became the Molly Ivins as we've come to know her," said Eckhardt, Ms. Ivins' friend for nearly 40 years. "The Observer had such wonderful writers doing such wonderful stories at the time, and Molly was always right in the middle of everything."
Her writing flair caught the attention of The New York Times, which hired her to cover city hall, then later moved her to the statehouse bureau in Albany. Later, she was assigned to the Times' Rocky Mountain bureau in Denver.
Even though she wrote the Times' obituary for Elvis Presley in 1977, Ms. Ivins said later that she and the Times proved to be a mismatch. In a 2002 interview with the Star-Telegram, Ms. Ivins recalled that she would write about something that "squawked like a $2 fiddle" only to have a Times editor rewrite it to say "as an inexpensive instrument."
So Ms. Ivins returned to Austin in 1982 to become a columnist for the Dallas Times-Herald and reconnect with such political figures as Ann Richards, who would later become governor, and Bob Bullock, then the hard-drinking state comptroller who later wielded great power as lieutenant governor.
Trademark language
Her column provided Ms. Ivins the freedom to express her views with the colorful language that would become her trademark. She called such figures as Ross Perot, former U.S. Sen. John Tower and ex-Gov. Bill Clements "runts with attitudes." As a candidate for governor, George W. Bush became "Shrub," a nickname she never tired of using.
Surprised became "whomper-jawed." An angry person would "throw a walleyed fit."
Ms. Ivins, who was single and had no children, told readers about her cancer in a matter-of-fact afterward in an otherwise ordinary column.
"I have contracted an outstanding case of breast cancer, from which I fully intend to recover," she wrote in her Dec. 14, 1999, column. "I don't need get-well cards, but I would like the beloved women readers to do something for me: Go. Get. The. Damn. Mammogram. Done."
Ms. Ivins wrote three books and co-authored a fourth. She was a three-time finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and had served on Amnesty International's Journalism Network, but the iconoclastic writer often said that her two highest honors were being banned from the conservative campus of Texas A&M University and having the Minneapolis police name their mascot pig after her when she covered the department.
According to family representatives, Ms. Ivins is survived by her sister, Sara Ivins Maley of Albuquerque, N.M., her brother, Andy Ivins of London; sister-in-law Carla Ivins, nephew Drew and niece Darby; niece Margot Hutchison and her husband, Neil, and their children Sam, Andy and Charlie of San Diego, Calif., and nephew Paul Maley and his wife, Karianna, and their children Marty, Anneli and Finnbar of Eltham, Victoria, Australia.
Funeral arrangements were pending
Ms. Ivins, the Star-Telegram's political columnist for nine years ending in 2001, had written for The New York Times, the Dallas Times-Herald and Time magazine and had been a sought-after pundit on television talk shows where she provided a Texas slant on issues ranging from President Bush's pedigree to the culture wars rooted in the 1960s.
"She was magical in her writing," said Mike Blackman, a former Star-Telegram executive editor who hired Ms. Ivins at the Austin bureau in 1992, a few months after the Times-Herald folded. "She could turn a phrase in such a way that a pretty hard-hitting point didn't hurt so bad."
Ms. Ivins, a California native who moved to Houston as a child with her family, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999. Two years later, after enduring a radical mastectomy and chemotherapy, doctors told her she had a 70 percent chance of remaining cancer-free for five years. At the time, she said she liked the odds.
But the cancer recurred in 2003 and again last year. In recent weeks, she had suspended her twice-weekly column for Creators Syndicate, allowing guest writers to use the space while she underwent further treatment. She made a brief return to writing in mid-January, urging readers to resist President Bush's increase in the number of troops in Iraq. She likened her call to an old-fashioned "newspaper crusade."
"We are the people who run this country," Ms. Ivins said in the column published in the Jan. 14 edition of the Star-Telegram. "We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war.
"Raise hell," she continued. "Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and are trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge."
She ended the piece by endorsing last Saturday's peace march in Washington: "We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'"
Ms. Ivins died at 5:24 p.m. Wednesday at her home in central Austin, representatives of her family said.
President Bush called Ms. Ivins a "Texas original" in a statement Wednesday.
"I respected her convictions, her passionate belief in the power of words, and her ability to turn a phrase. She fought her illness with that same passion. Her quick wit and commitment to her beliefs will be missed. Laura and I send our condolences to Molly Ivins' family and friends."
The spice of Texas
Born Mary Tyler Ivins on Aug. 30, 1944, in Monterey, Calif., Ms. Ivins was raised in the upscale River Oaks section of Houston. She earned her journalism degree at elite Smith College in Massachusetts in 1966.
She later earned a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
She ventured to Minnesota, taking a job as a police reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune.
Growing weary of the winters in the Upper Midwest and missing the spice of Texas food and its politics, Ms. Ivins moved to Austin to become co-editor of the Texas Observer, long considered the state's liberal conscience.
Nadine Eckhardt, the former wife of the late Texas novelist Billy Lee Bramer and who later married former U.S. Rep. Bob Eckhardt, said Ms. Ivins soon became a fixture in the Austin political and cocktail party scene in the early 1970s.
"That's where she became the Molly Ivins as we've come to know her," said Eckhardt, Ms. Ivins' friend for nearly 40 years. "The Observer had such wonderful writers doing such wonderful stories at the time, and Molly was always right in the middle of everything."
Her writing flair caught the attention of The New York Times, which hired her to cover city hall, then later moved her to the statehouse bureau in Albany. Later, she was assigned to the Times' Rocky Mountain bureau in Denver.
Even though she wrote the Times' obituary for Elvis Presley in 1977, Ms. Ivins said later that she and the Times proved to be a mismatch. In a 2002 interview with the Star-Telegram, Ms. Ivins recalled that she would write about something that "squawked like a $2 fiddle" only to have a Times editor rewrite it to say "as an inexpensive instrument."
So Ms. Ivins returned to Austin in 1982 to become a columnist for the Dallas Times-Herald and reconnect with such political figures as Ann Richards, who would later become governor, and Bob Bullock, then the hard-drinking state comptroller who later wielded great power as lieutenant governor.
Trademark language
Her column provided Ms. Ivins the freedom to express her views with the colorful language that would become her trademark. She called such figures as Ross Perot, former U.S. Sen. John Tower and ex-Gov. Bill Clements "runts with attitudes." As a candidate for governor, George W. Bush became "Shrub," a nickname she never tired of using.
Surprised became "whomper-jawed." An angry person would "throw a walleyed fit."
Ms. Ivins, who was single and had no children, told readers about her cancer in a matter-of-fact afterward in an otherwise ordinary column.
"I have contracted an outstanding case of breast cancer, from which I fully intend to recover," she wrote in her Dec. 14, 1999, column. "I don't need get-well cards, but I would like the beloved women readers to do something for me: Go. Get. The. Damn. Mammogram. Done."
Ms. Ivins wrote three books and co-authored a fourth. She was a three-time finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and had served on Amnesty International's Journalism Network, but the iconoclastic writer often said that her two highest honors were being banned from the conservative campus of Texas A&M University and having the Minneapolis police name their mascot pig after her when she covered the department.
According to family representatives, Ms. Ivins is survived by her sister, Sara Ivins Maley of Albuquerque, N.M., her brother, Andy Ivins of London; sister-in-law Carla Ivins, nephew Drew and niece Darby; niece Margot Hutchison and her husband, Neil, and their children Sam, Andy and Charlie of San Diego, Calif., and nephew Paul Maley and his wife, Karianna, and their children Marty, Anneli and Finnbar of Eltham, Victoria, Australia.
Funeral arrangements were pending
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