Helen Dewar (7 August 1936–4 November 2006), journalist, was born in Stockton, California, and was the daughter of Herbert D. Dewar, an attorney and walnut farmer, and Gertrude Howland Dewar. She graduated from Stanford University in 1957 with a major in political science and experience reporting for the student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, of which she became editor. Dewar was a public affairs intern in 1958 at the Coro Foundation (later CORO Northern California), in San Francisco, where she learned to disregard personal emotions or biases in her reporting and focus on complex economic and human relationships. Her mentors at the foundation suggested that she employ her talents and abilities in Washington, D.C., and in 1958 she accepted a position at the Washington Post.

The staff of the Women's Section of the newspaper assigned Dewar menial tasks, and she resigned after one week to take a job covering local and state government for the Northern Virginia Sun, in Arlington County. There she had the opportunity to report on one of the most contentious issues of the day, desegregation of the public schools. In an era when many women still wore white gloves and hats to work, and unmarried women in journalism such as Dewar seldom delved into the soiled underside of Virginia politics and southern gentility, she boldly reported on the actions of officials who refused to comply with court-ordered desegregation of public schools.

In 1961 the Washington Post hired Dewar as a reporter for its Metro Section. Four years later she assumed assignments reporting on Virginia politics and government, in which she took advantage of the contacts and resources that she had developed. Dewar began covering national politics during the presidential campaign of 1976 and from 1977 to 1979 reported on organized labor and other related issues until the Post assigned her to her last and most prestigious beat, covering the United States Senate. Dewar learned the arcane rules of the Senate, and her self-effacing good humor and frank style won high praise from the senators she covered. In the 1990s after congressional leaders tried to ban members of the news media from loitering in the halls outside the Senate chamber, she developed what became known as the Dewar walk. Meandering along, she avoided being removed from her stakeout post and was able to interview senators and others and to get the last and sometimes best quotations before her deadlines.

In 1984 Dewar was the fifth journalist and the first woman to receive the Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress, and in 1987 she won the Washington Post's Eugene Meyer Award. The Virginia Communications Hall of Fame inducted her in 2006, the same year she received the Washington Press Club Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. When Dewar retired in 2004, Senate leaders from both parties praised her professionalism and fairness. Helen Dewar died of breast cancer in Alexandria on 4 November 2006 and was buried at Stockton Rural Cemetery, in California. She left much of her estate to CORO Northern California.

Sources Consulted:
Birth date in Social Security application, Social Security Administration, Office of Earnings Operations, Baltimore, Md.; family information provided by cousin Greg Dewar (2008); other information provided by Tracey Jones, CORO Northern California, and by Bob Gibson, Larry J. Sabato, and John W. Warner (all 2008); Washington Post, 2 June 1987, 9 Feb. 2006; Richmond Times-Dispatch, 21 Jan. 2006; retirement tribute in Congressional Record, 108th Cong., 2d sess., S10382; obituaries in Washington Post, 5 Nov. 2006 (portrait), and Stockton, Calif., Record, 12 Nov. 2006; memorial tribute by David S. Broder in Washington Post, 7 Nov. 2006.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Alyson L. Taylor-White.

How to cite this page:
Alyson L. Taylor-White,"Helen Dewar (1936–2006)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2016 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dewar_Helen, accessed [today's date]).

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