Katherine "Kate" Drummond, journalist for the Atlantic Telegraph, died at the age of 34 while covering the attack on the Hindenburg. She is one of two casualties in the tragic bombing early Friday morning, May 7, 1937 by the group calling themselves The Anarchist Black Cross. Her shocking and pointeless death has stolen one of the sharpest journalistic minds of our time.
Drummond was extraordinary by any standard, and especially the one applied to women. Ivy League educated, fluent in four languages with an ability to command a room before she'd even properly entered, Drummond has been affectionately referred to by colleagues as the "most famous newspaper man of her time." As the Telegraph commented in its official response to her death, "Kate was an outstanding colleague, a stellar reporter, and a true blue friend. Her death is an act of barbarity that makes mockery of everything her killers claimed to believe in."
Drummond was born in the Main Line area of Philadelphia where, from a very young age, she exhibited a preternatural curiosity of the world around her. This inquisitive nature soon lent itself to an early talent for journalism. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Drummond began working for various local Philadelphia papers. She quickly acquired a reputation for tenacity that bordered on fearlessness.
It was at the New York Journal in 1929 that Drummond was able to test that reputation at the behest of the Journal's owner and media mogul William Randolph Hearst, who sponsored an American Graf Zeppelin flight around the world. This expedition made Drummond the first woman to circle the globe by air, however she resented this kind of acclaim insisting women should be judged by the same merits as men and not be made into spectales by "such dubious distinctions."
This journey sparked in Drummond a love affair with travel that lead her to spend the better part of a decade as a war correspondent covering the conflicts in both Manchuria and Ethiopia at a time when most editors did not send women to war. Drummond was nominated for a Pulitzer for her coverage of the Japanese Invasion of Manchuria, as well as her reports from the front lines of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.
By the time Drummond returned to New York in 1935, she had become a well-known member of the American literary elite. She was given a column at the prestigious Atlantic Telegraph, where her pieces on social and cultural issues quickly became a highlight among readers and was syndicated (information blocked in screen capture) papers. This column (information blocked in screen capture) the voice of the (information blocked in screen capture) Drummond to write about everythingn from Roosevelt's "New Deal" to the completion of the Hoover Dam to Jesse Owen's shining victory in the Berlin Olympics.
Drummond was in Lakehurst, NJ to cover the arrival of the Hindenburg. She was then scheduled to board the zeppelin once more on its return flight to Europe where she would be covering the coronation of King George the VI.
Kate is survived by her parents, Martin and Evelyn Drummond of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and by her elder brother Edward, and younger sister, Margaret. Kate also leaves behind a cat, affectionately named Pinball.
In lieu of flowers, the family is requesting that donations be made out to The Newswoman's Club of New York.
Katherine "Kate" Drummond, journalist, born April 19, 1903, died May 7, 1937.
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