Betsy Wade

Wade was born on July 18, 1929, to Sidney and Elizabeth Manning Wade in Manhattan. She had one younger sister, Ellen. Sidney Wade was an executive at Union Carbide and her mother had inherited family money. Her mother struggled with mental illness throughout Wade's childhood. The family moved to suburban Bronxville, New York, in 1934. At her junior high school and at Bronxville High School, she was a staffer at the student newspaper. When she was fourteen her parents divorced. She attended Carleton College in Minnesota, transferring to Barnard College in New York and earned her bachelor's degree in 1951. She earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1952 and was top of her class in copy editing. == Career ==

Wade's career began at the New York Herald Tribune in the women's section in 1952. She was also a founding member of the Times' Women's Caucus, formed in 1972. In 1979, she became the first woman president of the New York Newspaper Guild. Wade became a weekly columnist, taking over the Times' The Practical Traveler column in 1987. A collection of her columns was published in book form as The New York Times Practical Traveler Handbook (1994). After 45 years at the Times, Wade retired in 2001. After her retirement she taught classes in public policy and journalism at Hunter College. == Awards and honors ==

The Times' publication of the Pentagon Papers, which Wade helped prepare, won a 1972 Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service in journalism. Wade won the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Society of Silurians in 2016. Journalism & Women Symposium created a fellowship for women journalists of color honoring her, the Betsy Wade Fund Fellowship. == Personal life ==

She married James Boylan on December 27, 1952. He later moved to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is professor emeritus of journalism and history. She continued to write under the name Betsy Wade. Wade and Boylan had two sons, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. == Death ==

Wade was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2017, and died on December 3, 2020, at age 91, at her home in New York City. and by the State Historical Society of Missouri. ==Books==

• (ed.) Forward Positions: The War Correspondence of Homer Bigart, by Homer Bigart. University of Arkansas Press, 1992. Introduction by Harrison E. Salisbury. • The New York Times Practical Traveler Handbook: An A-Z Guide to Getting There and Back. Times Books, 1994. == References ==