Helen Fogel on strike at the Detroit News (Photo by George Waldman)
In local circles, Helen Fogel was a legendary labor writer for the Detroit News and Free Press who knew her stuff and had access to the big names in labor.
Fogel died earlier this month of pneumonia at a nursing home in Pasadena, Calif., the Detroit Free Press reports. She was 84. Up until this year, she had been living in Machiasport, Maine, near her birthplace.
Eric D. Lawrence of the Free Press writes that Fogel also helped land the first union contract for editorial employees at the Detroit News.
Charles Fogel, her son, told the Freep that Fogel had great affection for newspapers. She worked at the Free Press before heading down the street to work for the competitor, the News.
He said his mother once interviewed Eleanor Roosevelt as a cub reporter in Maine.
"My mother started as a reporter in the women's section in 1968. She was among those who went on strike shortly after joining the paper. But she loved the papers and the culture of fierce journalism that was cultivated at them and soon was back on the job," Charles Fogel recalled in an e-mail.
"Helen had deep sources in the UAW and other labor unions. She was a valuable teammate to younger reporter colleagues – they called her 'Mother Fogel' – during Free Press coverage of the 1987 UAW contract bargaining with Detroit's automakers,Free Press columnist Tom Walsh, who was then the paper's business editor, told his paper.
While at the Detroit News in 1995, Fogel went on strike. During the strike, she eventually went to work for the UAW.
Lou Mleczko, former head of the Detroit Newspaper Guild and a former reporter at the Detroit News commented on Facebook:
I worked closely with Helen when she was the Administrative Officer of the Detroit Newspaper Guild when I was one of the activists that won an organizing campaign at The News. She was the first woman ever for that job in Detroit. And she was the only female officer with the metro council of newspaper unions. I am very saddened to hear of her death.
-- Allan Lengel
