Almanac of Story Tellers: Gail Sheehy

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books 

Today is the story of Nov. 27th

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    It is the 331st day of the year, leaving 34 days remaining in 2022. 

    On this date in 1937, the journalist and author Gail Sheehy was born.

    She told her stories about the rich and famous, and the poor and destitute, with shoe-leather reporting that produced intimate details, insightful analysis, and scenes that matched any novel. She covered and wrote about women's issues, mid-life crises, and the changing culture in which she lived.

    Sheehy was among the group of mid-century journalists who practiced so-called New Journalism, which put reporting -- and sometime the reporter -- at the heart of the story. For a magazine article on prostitution in New York, Sheehy donned hot pants and go-go boots to interview the prostitutes, and hid a tape-recorder underneath a mattress to get the authentic language used in the sex-work trade.

    Her first newspaper job was at the Democrat and Chronicle, a daily paper in upstate New York. She moved to the city, and wrote for several newspapers, along with New York  magazine, then in the early years of its existence. One of the stories she wrote then was about Robert F, Kennedy's 1968 campaign for president.

    In the 1970s, she continued writing for magazines, profiling people and covering cultural and social trends. She wrote several novels. In East Hampton, N.Y., she found two women living in an old, worn down mansion, and wrote a profile on them for New York. The women, known as Little Edie Beale and her mother, Big Edie Beale, were reclusive cousins of Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis. 

    Perhaps Sheehy's biggest and best-known book was Passages, about how men and women enter a mid-life crisis in their mid-to-late 30s before discovering a "second adulthood." It was a best seller that remained on the New York Times list for three years, and the Library of Congress named it one of the 10 most influential books of our time.

    In the 1980s, she started writing political profiles, first on U.S. presidential candidate Gary hart, then of others in the race, before going international -- Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Many of the profiles were turned into books.

    In 2014, she wrote a memoir, Daring: My Passages.

    Sheehy died in 2020.