Memoir tells of pioneering Hill journalist, 97

by BILL GODFREY

"I was born in a white pebbledash house with green shutters at the end of a street called East Gravers Lane. Some people thought the name so funereal that they would not have it on their visiting cards."

From: Wings on My Heels: A Newspaperwoman's Story, by Ellen Taussig, 1986.

CAPE MAY — Ninety-seven-year-old Ellen Taussig began life as a privileged child of Philadelphia society — a "marcher in the parade," as she described it. But fate had other challenges in mind for the Chestnut Hill native. From a sheltered upbringing, Taussig blossomed into a trailblazing journalist at a time when newswomen were scarce. Today the former debutante with the old Philadelphia family name lives in Cape May and continues playing the hand she's been dealt — with aplomb and merriment.

"1906 was a day of visiting cards," she writes in the opening chapter of her 1986 autobiography. "People came with them in cases of leather, silver or even ivory, like the one my grandmother Ellen brought from the Orient, with its carving of myriad, busy little figures."

Wings on My Heels: A Newspaperwoman's Story, chronicles Taussig's life from her privileged beginnings on the "right side of the tracks," through wars and labor strife to celebrity interviews with Liberace and Patricia Nixon. Her passage from "citizen to reporter," the drama of living for the adrenaline rush of the newsroom, and a delicately told tale of life in Philadelphia are available in this hard-to-find book that's as well-turned-out as Ellen herself.

Breeding shows. Her story is a half-century of life through the eye of a dedicated newswoman. She's a polished news reporter, but also a lover of poetry, and her writing reflects such. Hers are the experiences of a cultured survivor and her story begins in the gray stoned buildings of Chestnut Hill. "Along the fence by the side porch rambled pink roses and honeysuckle," she writes of her early days. "I doubt if any street was sweeter in June than East Gravers Lane."

Her early years were insular and without want. Her mother was the former Lillian Meredith Ball, "descended from William Ball of Devonshire, England, armor makers to the Crown." Visits by her grandfather, Rear Admiral Edward David Taussig, were "eventful in both enjoyment and tonnage."

The Springside-educated debutante "was presented to society at a large tea" in the "Season of 1924-25."

"Those were peaceful, prosperous years," she writes.

Taussig joined 125 young women making their debut as marriageable girls that year. Interested bachelors had to be "suitable," she says of the era. For a woman of that time, marriage, even slightly prearranged, was the fulfillment of her purpose. A personality that leaned toward the dramatic gave her father fits, but Ellen's promise was undeniable.

"The 1924 yearbook of Springside School prophesied that I would be a bellboy at the Ritz," she writes with a bit of devilment. But she wasn't far off the mark.

Destiny changed Taussig's course in 1925. The death of her father in the hospital meant she now had to do something none of her fellow debutantes ever considered: getting a job. And she would never marry.

"Daddy," she writes, "had held a large amount of accidental insurance, but a more moderate indemnification for health."

With her father's death she went from sipping "tomato surprise" in the top-floor tearoom of John Wanamaker's department store to punching a time clock in the store's basement and selling scarves on the first floor.

But Taussig wastes nary a word on what might or could have been. For Ellen, life was for living — and writing, and that's what she did.

Around 1938, Agnes Churchman of the Evening Public Ledger in Philadelphia decided to relinquish her column for the Ledger's Society Department. "The important thing to remember in those days were who was there and what they wore," says Taussig of society reports.

She lobbied for Churchman's vacated spot, and society editor Anna May McCabe gave her the job. Taussig's ample supply of Yankee moxie was always an asset. "It is one of the peculiar psychological facets of this world that unmitigated confidence brings positive results," she writes.

Taussig went home with 200 name cards and earned $50 a week filing stories on Philadelphia society's doings, but her course in journalism was set. It was an event at the Philadelphia Academy of Music that Taussig remembers as the moment she began her long career in 1938.

"At every important change in our life, every milestone, there probably is a day, even an hour, which consciously or unconsciously marks the passage from one part of it to another," she writes.

"Now as I stood in the November cold approaching people whom I had formerly been among, asking them to pose, holding the flashlight for the photographer, being both conspicuous and acquisitive — in short, being everything that my training had precluded — I passed from citizen to reporter. My life was changed; there would be no return and the years would assure that I would never be quite the same again," she writes.

Taussig then landed a position at the Philadelphia Daily News, before moving on to the Philadelphia Record. Taussig writes openly about the trials and tribulations of labor strife and the challenges of being a woman in the newsroom in the 1940s. She offers insight from 25 years at the Buffalo Evening News where she covered news on both sides of the Canadian border. Her love of and dedication to the news business runs through the book. It's the story of a professional woman succeeding in a most demanding occupation.

"Most people who stay in the news business love it," she writes. "Once a true reporter has savored it, he never gets over it Š he has become an organ of observation and communication, and cannot be reconverted."

Taussig now lives in Cape May, N.J., at Victoria Manor, an assisted living facility. Until recently, she wrote a weekly column entitled "Memory Lane" for the Cape May Star and Wave, the paper of record for the City of Cape May. "I am with you wandering through memory lane," she lightly sings as she recalls the inspiration for the column's title. The twinkle is still in her eye, and a recent spring day found her relating stories to the staff as she was having her hair done.

Ellen's book is filled with leading figures from the last half century. Her story is about "newspapering with insights and descriptions of the press, its management and mismanagement, unionism, strikes, training, discipline and folkways."

It's about Chestnut Hill and Philadelphia and adversity, obstacles, passion, duty — and the well-lived life.

"When you sit with Ellen, you sit with history," said Barbara Hoepp, one of Ellen's primary caregivers at Victoria Manor.

With her trademark steady and lilting voice Ellen admits her "memory is not what it was." She needs a wheelchair these days but nary a thought is wasted on what could have been or should have been.

"It's what I was meant to do," she says of her career. "I'm grateful to God for any opportunities he's given me. I enjoyed it. There's no end to my enjoyment," she said.

Wings on My Heels: A Newspaperwoman's Story might be found on an out-of-print Web search or by contacting Peter E. Randall Publisher at www.perpublisher.com. ISBN 0914339-184.