Ruth Ashton Taylor, the primary feminine tv newscaster in Los Angeles and one of many first within the nation, died Thursday in Northern California, her household introduced. She was 101.
A Los Angeles-area native, Taylor trailblazed a 50-year profession in journalism, throughout which she interviewed the likes of Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer, labored with business icons together with Edward R. Murrow and earned a star on the Hollywood Stroll of Fame.
“She was definitely that girl on the market doing one thing that none of us noticed different ladies doing on the time,” Susan Conklin, one in every of Taylor’s daughters, mentioned in an interview with The Occasions.
Taylor was born in Lengthy Seaside in 1922 and graduated from Lengthy Seaside Polytechnic Excessive College and Scripps School in Claremont earlier than heading east to attend Columbia College for graduate college.
Virtually instantly after graduating from Columbia, Taylor was employed to hitch a CBS documentary staff led by Murrow, Conklin mentioned.
Regardless of being in her early 20s on the time, Taylor proved to be a fearless reporter.
“She was making an attempt to do a bit on the peacetime makes use of of nuclear vitality and he or she went and he or she discovered Dr. Einstein,” Conklin mentioned.
Taylor had been trying to contact Einstein for a while earlier than she traveled unannounced to Princeton College, the place he was working.
Taylor occurred upon Einstein as he was strolling down a hill.
She launched herself.
“He mentioned, ‘Ah! The broadcasting girl,’” Taylor recalled in a set of interviews finished for the Washington Press Membership Basis.
Taylor returned to Los Angeles in 1951 and was employed because the West Coast’s first feminine tv reporter at KNXT, now KCBS.
She left journalism for a short while within the late Fifties earlier than returning to KNXT in 1962, the place she spent the remainder of her profession earlier than retiring in 1989.
Taylor lined an array of matters throughout her profession, and hosted a wide range of segments and reveals.
Throughout one fireplace, Taylor recalled, a Los Angeles County fireplace chief mentioned, “That is the primary time I’ve ever been interviewed on a hearth line by a girl.”
“However not the final,” Taylor replied.
After formally retiring from KCBS, Taylor continued to work on retainer for the broadcaster into the Nineties.
Among the many honors she obtained in acknowledgment of her decades-long profession was a Lifetime Achievement Emmy.
Regardless of Taylor’s demanding work schedule, Conklin mentioned her mom was at all times there for her household.
“Work was actually vital to her,” Conklin mentioned. “She labored arduous, however I by no means felt like she forgot she had youngsters. We nonetheless got here first for her.”
“She simply confirmed up as a mother … after which confirmed up as a grandmother and confirmed up as a great-grandmother,” Conklin added.
Taylor is survived by her daughters Susan, Sadie and Laurel Conklin, her stepson John Taylor, a grandson and granddaughter-in-law and a great-grandson.
