This 1954 photo of Chattanoogan Drue Smith recalls her time as one of Tennessee’s most admired journalists.
Here, Smith is seen on the set of her program, “Party Line,” on WDEF-TV. The program was sponsored by Chattanooga’s Electric Power Board, and this photo is part of a selection of EPB images preserved at the website ChattanoogaHistory.com. Smith was WDEF-TV’s first public affairs director.
(If you can identify the man sitting with Smith in this photo, please contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com and this report will be updated online with his name.)
Smith, who attended Girls Preparatory School and the University of Chattanooga (now the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), evolved from being a writer for both of Chattanooga’s daily newspapers to become the queen of Nashville’s Capitol press corps. She was the first woman to cover the Tennessee General Assembly full-time.
Smith, who died in 2001 at age 86, entered journalism at a time when there were few female reporters in Tennessee newsrooms. She was inducted into the Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame in 2015 alongside two other legends of Chattanooga journalism, Chattanooga News-Free Press publisher Roy McDonald and former New York Times reporter and Chattanooga Times editor, John N. Popham.