2022 Memorial Service

In Memoriam
Remembering NFPW and affiliate members who’ve died since the June 2021 NFPW virtual conference.

Arkansas Press Women
APW charter member Dorothy Davis Stuck, 100, a longtime newspaper editor, publisher and civil rights advocate, died July 1, 2021. She and her husband, Howard, published three newspapers: the Marked Tree Tribune, the Lepanto News Record and the Truman Democrat. Stuck served as editor of the Marked Tree Tribune. Her newspaper career and time with APW took a long pause when she moved to Dallas in 1970 to be the regional director of the Office of Civil Rights for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, helping implement Title IX. When she returned to Arkansas, she and friend Nan Snow started the management and publications firm Stuck & Snow. The two authored a biography on Roberta Fulbright, another APW creator and mother of Arkansas Sen. William Fulbright. An inductee of the Arkansas Women Hall of Fame, Stuck was honored during the 2021 NFPW conference hosted by APW. 

Media Network Idaho
Meg Parks Donahue, 48, died Nov. 19, 2021. Donahue was a past president of Idaho Press Women, now known as Media Network Idaho. Donahue was born several months after her parents, Allen and Peggy Parks, bought the Challis, Idaho, local newspaper. After she married her husband, Shawn Donahue, in 1995, she commuted 100 miles daily to work at the family’s paper, while Shawn worked on the family farm. When her mom retired from the newspaper, Meg and Shawn moved to Boise where she took a graphics job at All America Publishing from 2005 until she retired in 2017, with a brief stint as managing editor of Idaho Magazine in 2007. Besides writing, Donahue enjoyed making her own greeting cards and doing cross-stitch; she wrote about the latter in a blog called Live to Stitch.

Illinois Woman’s Press Association
Aldona Lipskis, 93, died May 11 in Wood Dale, Illinois, where she had lived since 1960. She had been a member of NFPW and IWPA for 55 years. Born in Kaunas, Lithuania, she spent her first decades in the U.S. modeling in Chicago and New York. In 1966, Aldona and fellow IWPA member Millie Vickery created the publication “Pulse of the Doctor’s Wife,” an offshoot of the Illinois State Medical Society publication. They received numerous awards, including first place from the Illinois Press Association. She had served on several boards, including the American Lung Association and American Cancer Society of Illinois.

Woman’s Press Club of Indiana
Ruth Chin, 97, a WPCI and NFPW member for 59 years, died Oct. 1, 2021. Chin was a barrier breaker. She was Indiana’s first female photojournalist and the first Chinese female photojournalist. She was the first woman to photograph a state high school basketball championship in Hinkel Fieldhouse. In 1951, she was the first female to win the Bushemi Award, the top news photography award from the Indiana Associated Press. She grew up in Muncie, where her family ran the city’s first Chinese restaurant. At age 8, she started taking photographs with the camera her father bought her. She later ran her own studio and wrote a newspaper column called “Positives and Negatives.” She joined WPCI in 1962, served as its president from 1974 through 1976 and was its Communicator of Achievement in 1975 and 1987. 

Kansas Professional Communicators
Carol E. Oukrop, 87, a longtime faculty member at Kansas State University and the first director of the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications, died Feb. 5 at her home in Manhattan, Kansas. She earned journalism and communications degrees from the University of North Dakota and the University of Iowa and worked at newspapers and in public relations in North Dakota and Iowa. She taught at Dickinson State College in North Dakota and the University of Iowa before spending 33 years at K-State. She did pioneering work on the status of women in journalism and mass communication education. Oukrop was honored by Kansas Professional Communicators in 1991 as its Communicator of Achievement. 

Missouri Professional Communicators
Alice Handelman, 79, died May 16 after battling leukemia. An award-winning writer and photographer, Handelman’s passion for journalism began as a teenager, writing for school newspapers. She met her husband of 55 years during an interview as a reporter for the University of Missouri student newspaper. She discovered a freelance writing career allowed her to continue her career ambitions while raising a family. She wrote feature stories and hosted a TV news show about the St. Louis Blues hockey team and taught a class for women on understanding the sport. She served on several boards, including MPC, and her Jewish philanthropy touched many.

Marge Polcyn, 93, who helped plan Missouri Professional Communicators’ programs and judged contests, died Feb. 5. Her role as public affairs officer for St. Louis Public Schools from 1976 to 1993 included years of public attention during court-sanctioned desegregation plans. She also served 10 years as executive director of the St. Louis Press Club. She held board and advisory positions for Women in Communication, Older Women’s League, and Mathews-Dickey Boys and Girls Club. She earned a master’s degree in mass communications and media from Webster University while working full time and the mother of four children. She was an NFPW member from 1997 to 2015.

Oregon Press Women
Suzanne (Sue) Graham, 70, died March 5. She was born in Australia and studied for a doctorate in English literature at University of London. She moved Portland, Oregon, where she launched a successful career in public relations and communications and joined Oregon Press Women. At the end of her career, she was the global PR spokesperson for two technology companies, Mentor Graphics and Siemens. Graham raised two children, Caitlin and Gavin, wrote poetry and was an avid world traveler. One of her photos won a travel magazine award. Twenty years of recurring breast cancer ended her life shortly after she retired.