![\"Bess](\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/scott-may16.jpg\")
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The year 1915\u00a0was a time of great change all across\u00a0the globe. World War I had broken out in Europe a year earlier, and while the United States had not yet officially entered the conflict, the move began to seem inevitable that summer when the Germans began attacking American and British civilian ships.<\/p>\n
At the time, Bess Whitehead Scott<\/a>, BA 1912, was\u00a0a 25-year-old high school English and Latin teacher in Houston —\u00a0but her sights were set elsewhere. Specifically, she wanted to write for\u00a0the Houston Post<\/em> — a job that, at the time, was\u00a0limited to only men. But by\u00a0pointing out that men would likely be away at war during the next few years, she\u00a0managed to talk her way into a trial-run position. That initial two-week run\u00a0made Scott\u00a0the Post<\/em>\u2019s first female reporter — and marks the beginning of her\u00a077-year career in\u00a0journalism.<\/p>\n “It wasn’t easy in those days for a woman to get her foot in the city room door,\u201d remembered\u00a0William P. Hobby Jr.,\u00a0who ran the\u00a0Post<\/em> from 1963-83. \u201cBess made it because she understood one of the basic principles of the newspaper business — everyone has a story. You have only to discover it and tell it well.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the years, Scott\u00a0covered such major events as the Galveston floods of 1915<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the Democratic Convention of 1928<\/a>;\u00a0she also\u00a0interviewed (and regarded as good friends) such\u00a0names such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson and Clark Gable. In fact, when she wrote her autobiography at age 98, she titled it You Meet Such Interesting People<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n In 1991, shortly after Scott celebrated her 100th birthday, the Writers’ League of Texas honored her by creating\u00a0the Bess Whitehead Scott Journalism Scholarship<\/a>, to be awarded annually to promising upper-level journalism students at an eligible Texas university. (Fittingly, one of this year’s winners is\u00a0also a Baylor Bear: senior journalism major Rae Jefferson<\/a>.)\u00a0At age 102, Scott was recognized by Baylor as a\u00a0Distinguished Alumna, and two years later, she was inducted into the Texas Women\u2019s Hall of Fame<\/a>.<\/p>\n