.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} For decades, she was the woman in the front row at White House press conferences and Helen Thomas, approaching her 87th birthday, is still one tough reporter. Known for the straightforward queries aimed at every American president since John Kennedy, she had the honored role of asking the first question until George W. Bush demoted her after a press secretary accused her of “blindsiding the president” with unexpected questions.

“Oh, you know,” she says, “it doesn’t matter whether a president likes me or not. We each have our jobs to do. I respect the office and politely ask questions no one wants to ask any more. Tough questions are not disrespectful,” she emphasizes, adding that she believes today’s reporters are “finally coming out of a coma. After 9/11, the entire press corps was so afraid of being called unpatriotic, they stopped questioning!”

That has never been one of Thomas’s problems. She won the “Intrepid Award” given by the National Organization for Women in 2003, along with being cited as one of the Most Influential Women in America by The World Almanac. A different kind of honor: Years earlier, Pat Nixon announced Thomas’s engagement to Associated Press White House correspondent Douglas Cornell at a White House party hosted by President Nixon in Cornell’s honor.

And although women are hardly uncommon in today’s press rooms, Thomas was the only woman print journalist to travel with President Nixon on his landmark travels to China in the 1970s. Indeed, she traveled around the world many times with Presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton. And she covered every economic summit during their presidencies.

Those close to her say Helen Thomas has a soft, sweet side. “When we walk down a New York street and she’s recognized, which a lot of celebrities hate, she always takes the time to stop and talk. She’s one of the nicest authors I’ve ever worked with,” says Molly Dorozenski of Charles Scribner & Sons, publisher of her most recent book.

“Mostly, when people stop me, they want to talk about what I do,” Thomas says, “so I take the time to talk.”

She also discusses what she and her fellow journalists do for a living in her latest book. “I called my book ‘Watchdogs of Democracy?’ with a question mark because I was really upset and felt reporters let the country down,” she says.

Former Des Moines resident Basil Talbott, a longtime Washington reporter and political observer, says: “Helen was always feisty. She was with UPI (United Press International) when it was a powerful news service. She became an institution, but she earned that with her wonderful history as a reporter.”

One of her books, “Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom From the Front Row at the White House,” provides content for her speeches today. “Covering the White House has been fascinating,” Thomas said. “History is made there every day. If it isn’t happening, it’s going to happen, and fasten your seatbelts. I’ve covered his assassination and then JFK’s funeral. I went through the resignation of a president for the first time in history. And all along there were scandals and wars, first Vietnam and now Iraq, and everything in between.”

Thomas is outspokenly against American involvement in Iraq. “We simply should not be there,” she says. “All the reasons cited for going to war are untrue, and we now know that. When you invade a country that has done nothing to you, what does that make you? It makes you the invader, that’s what.

“What’s happening to us?” she asks. “The silence and lack of outrage over all the deaths in Iraq, both our own and the Iraqi people, is not American. We’re a great country, but we’re tolerating things we would never have tolerated in the past.

“We in the press have a special role since there is no other institution in our society … that can hold the president accountable. I do believe that our democracy can endure and prevail only if the American people are informed.”

Now on the speakers’ circuit and a Hearst Newspapers columnist, she still maintains a full schedule. A widow, she says of her newsman husband, “He was a quiet man, not loud and outspoken like me.”

The source of her tenacity and outspokenness? She grew up in Detroit, the daughter of Lebanese immigrant parents who had, she says, “a profound sense of justice. I get adrenaline from my outrage. Occasionally, I get mail from people who hate me, and they say, ‘Why don’t you retire? Why don’t you die?’ I say back to them. ‘Why don’t you live your own life? It must be very dull since you’re insisting on living mine!’

“As for my age, I think I’ll work all my life. When you’re having fun, why stop?”