Edith Kinney Gaylord Picture taken after installation as President of Women's National Press Club, 1944 EDITH GAYLORD  by David Dary Edith Kinney Gaylord was a small woman in stature who carried herself with an air of assured sophistication.  She was quiet in voice and seemed modest or shy, but she was a giant in so many other ways.  She was a gifted journalist and writer with a brilliant mind. She had compassion for other and willingly gave of her time and money to people and causes she believed in.      Her quiet philanthropy, which began during the 1960s, continues today through the “Inasmuch Foundation” benefiting charitable, scientific and educational pursuits in Oklahoma and Colorado Springs, and the “Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation” supporting projects designed to improve the quality and ethical standards of journalism.       Born in Oklahoma City on March 5, 1916, to Inez and E. K. Gaylord, she grew up in a newspaper family.  Her father was editor and publisher of The Oklahoman and Oklahoma City Times.      Until she was 12-years-old, Edith attended public schools in Oklahoma City.  Her parents then sent her to Switzerland where she spent two terms at Ecole Vinet in Lausanne.      She returned to Oklahoma City to complete her education and graduated from old Classen High School.  She then attended Colorado College in Colorado Springs until her junior year when she transferred to Wells College in Aurora, New York, graduating in the spring of 1939 with a bachelor of arts degree.      Returning west, she began her journalistic career on her father’s Oklahoma City newspapers first learning how to write news stories and then reporting for the women’s department.  Later she wrote broadcast features for WKY, her father’s radio station.        After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941 and World War II began, she covered general Oklahoma news for her father’s papers.  Soon she wanted a greater challenge and applied for a job with the Associated Press in New York.  She was hired and joined the AP in New York in the summer of  1942.  After five months proving herself, the AP transferred her to their bureau in Washington, D.C.  There she was the only woman on the general news staff.      One of Edith Gaylord’s early assignments was traveling with Madam Chiang Kai-shek as she toured America.  Edith filed many AP stories about the tour from San Francisco, Hollywood, Chicago and New York.      Back in Washington, D.C., Edith covered first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the first wife of any U.S. president to hold news conferences.  In 1944, Edith was elected president of the Women’s National Press Club.  In that position, she also served as secretary of Mrs.Roosevelt’s press conference committee and liaison between the President’s wife and members of the press.       Edith later said the biggest story she covered for the AP was the death of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945.  Following his death, she covered the new first lady Bess Truman.  After the war ended, Edith Gaylord, now 30-years-old, left the AP and returned to Oklahoma City to learn the business side of her father’s newspapers.    In the early 1950s, she returned to Washington to resume her journalistic work.  She covered among other things the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London.  From 1957 to 1959 she wrote a weekly magazine review column “Did You Read…?” published in the Sunday Oklahoman.      In 1963, Edith Gaylord, then 47-years-old, returned to Oklahoma and rejoined the family business becoming an active member of the board of directors of The Oklahoma Publishing Co. and then OPUBCO’s corporate secretary.  Beginning in the 1960s, Edith Gaylord quietly began supporting numerous community organizations and projects with her time and money.      In 1982, she founded the Inasmuch Foundation as a vehicle for giving to education, the arts, health and human services, historic preservation and environmental concerns. She took the name from a biblical passage in Matthew where Christ said, “Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”      That same year, she established the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation to support projects to improve the quality and ethical standards of journalism in media. It reflected her lifelong devotion to journalistic excellence.      She became a charter trustee at Colorado College in Colorado Springs and established endowments at the college.  In 1992, the college awarded her an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.  Five years later the University of Oklahoma also awarded her an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree for her major contributions.      By then her health was failing.  On Jan. 28, 2001, Edith Kinney Gaylord died at St. Anthony’s Hospital in Oklahoma City, the same hospital were she had been born 84 years earlier.       Just before her death, she provided an endowment of $500,000 to the University of Oklahoma to provide an annual $20,000 prize to a faculty or staff member, or student who exhibits “keen perceptivity.”  She wanted it called the Otis Sullivant Award in honor of the late chief political writer for The Oklahoman.  It was to go to a person “who manifests intuitiveness, instant comprehension, empathy, is observant and interprets from experience.”  Unexpected as it was, it was in keeping with Edith Kinney Gaylord’s nature.