This morning, the Women’s Media Center announced that its editor-in-chief, Mary Thom, was killed on Friday when the Honda Magna motorcycle she was riding was struck by a car on the Saw Mill River Parkway in Yonkers. In addition to co-founding Ms. magazine — which began as an insert in New York in 1971 — Thom also wrote several books, including a history of Ms. and an oral history of congresswoman Bella S. Abzug. Her colleagues Robin Morgan, Jane Fonda, and Gloria Steinem wrote in a statement: “Ms. Magazine, the Women’s Media Center, the women’s movement and American journalism have suffered an enormous blow. Mary was and will always be our moral compass and steady heart.” Steinem added, “She had a gift for helping people tell their own story, not for helping them sound like others, but helping them find their own voice.”
