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pregnant and so we petitioned for a better maternity policy and I've forgotten
exactly when that was, when that happened, but at one point, at some point we
petitioned for a better maternity policy so that subsequently women would not be
fired because they were pregnant. And I do remember that Cheryl Hall was
instrumental in that who is; writes for the business page today and Dotty Griffith
who was also working writing for the city desk at the time, went on to be food
editor and then restaurant critic and then she left. So eventually after Burl
Osborne came in 1980 they bridged my service so that those few months that I
was off when I was pregnant they just bridged that time and gave me credit for
those years. So that way I was eligible for three weeks vacation sooner, I was
eligible for pension sooner than I would've been. So in the end they did right by
me. But it was really a gradual ...
Barta - Interrupt me anytime you want to!
Barta -... but it was a gradual process where they started hiring more women and letting
women do more jobs. Eventually, but for a long time you know, it still was fairly
limited for what they would let women actually do. I did ... another kind of
pioneering thing, was I was ... I think they wanted to put me on some kind of a
editor track and so I was city editor for, I mean assistant city editor for about a
year. I'd have to look on my bio to see when that was, maybe, I don't know if
that's on there or not but, I was assistant city editor in charge of assignments and
after about a year of that I decided I wanted to go back to reporting, this is not for
me, it is not much fun. It wasn't what I liked to do. I stayed as a reporter covering
politics until 1980, and so Robert Decherd decided, he was by then in
management of some kind, decided that the Morning News should have a an
active op-ed page, similar to the New York Times op-ed page, at that time we
have an editorial page and the viewpoints page. And the viewpoints page was
basically syndicated columns and a couple of local columns. If it was Monday,
Wednesday and Friday we had Carl Rowan and somebody else and somebody
else; syndicated columnists. If it was Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday we had
some other syndicated columnists. They just took the columns, plugged them in
there. I was writing at that time, a column twice a week because I was writing
about politics, there were a couple, there was somebody in Austin who was
writing a column a week, somebody else in Dallas and so everybody just had their
slot. He wanted to make it into a real op-ed page where you had experts writing
about issues and you sought community people to write about community issues
and just regular op-ed pieces. The New York Times was the first to have an op-ed
page, and we were not too far behind but anyway, they asked me to start the op-
ed page and so I did that for a couple of years. And launched the page, started
getting local people to write for it and sort of got the dialogue going and got it
going. And then went back to be the supervising editor for the '84 elections and
over our political team and everything we were doing that year. We had the
Republican National Convention was in Dallas so it was a big political year to be a
big political job. We produced special sections everyday for that convention. So a
whole lot of coverage. So then after that I went back to the viewpoints page. And
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