Ruth Cowan Nash (June 15, 1901 - February 5, 1993) was the first woman war correspondent. She is famous for her coverage of World War II, during which she followed the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps and reported on major battles for the Associated Press.
Early life
Ruth Cowan Nash was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 15, 1901, the only child of parents William Henry and Ida (Baldwin) Cowan. Her father was a mining prospector who died in 1911, at which point Cowan's mother, Ida, bought a homestead in Florida. They were required by the government to live on the property in order to retain their homestead status, and they lived there for about two years trying to raise grapefruit and orange trees. At the end of that time, Nash and her mother returned to Salt Like City, where Nash attended St. Mary's Academy, a convent school, despite the fact that Nash's family was not Catholic. Ida Cowan had previously been a teacher, and felt that private schools provided a better education, so Nash completed seventh and eighth grade there.
Ida Cowan disliked the cold weather in Salt Lake City, and used the money that she saved from the sale of their homestead to move to San Antonio, Texas. Ida began traveling to find a job, but Nash requested to stay put. Her mother agreed, and found boarding her for at Ursuline Academy, a boarding school. Nash never again returned to living with her mother. Instead, she supported herself with odd jobs while living in San Antonio and attending two other schools, St. Michael's Academy and Main Avenue High School. She worked as a clerk, a librarian, and in the book section of a department store while in high school. When she enrolled in the Main Avenue High School, they found her to be an advanced student and allowed her to graduate high school in two years. During her time there, however, Nash met Elva Cunningham, the president of the San Antonio Parent Teacher Association. Because Nash's mother never lived anywhere consistently, Cunnginham invited Nash to live with the Cunningham family, which consisted of Elva and her husband, John, their sons, and Elva's sister, Mary Carter.
Nash enrolled in the University of Texas at Austin in 1919, and moved out of the Cunningham home in order to do so, but they remained like a second family to her. While there, Newman lived in a Catholic dormitory, Newman Hall. While there, she continued to work odd jobs to support herself. It was during this time that she gave herself the middle name Barbara, but she changed it to Baldwin, her mother's maiden name, shortly thereafter to please her. When Nash graduated in 1923, she became an algebra teacher at Main Avenue High School, the same high school that she had attended herself. While teaching, she lived with the Cunninghams once again.
Journalism career
Nash's journalism career began in 1924, when she began writing part-time as a movie reviewer for the San Antonio Evening News. She got the job through Mary Carter, sister of Elva Cunningham, who knew the managing editor of the paper and worked in the news room. In 1926 they hired her for a full-time position at the Evening News. Nash recalled in an oral history interview that she particularly liked getting "night assignments... because they didn't think I should have them." She also started offering her services as a free-lance journalist, and wrote for other papers, such as the Houston Chronicle, under the name Baldwin Cowan in order to disguise her gender. While working doing work for the Houston Chronicle, Nash met Oveta Culp Hobby and they became fast friends. She continued to work at the San Antonio Evening News until 1929, during which time she covered the 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston, Texas. While there, she interviewed Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Impressed with her work there, which she had written under her pen name of Baldwin Cowan, United Press offered her a job in January 1929, which she accepted. Not long after, an executive from United Press came to the newsroom looking to praise the work of Baldwin Cowan — when it became clear that there was no such man, only Ruth Cowan Nash, she was fired.