Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Times' Morgan chosen for Hall of Fame

The recently retired bureau chief is one of three women to be honored on March 14. Plaques featuring their photos and biographies will be permanently displayed in the state Capitol.

By STEVE BOUSQUET
Published November 30, 2005

TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Jeb Bush on Wednesday selected three trailblazing women for induction into the Florida Women's Hall of Fame, including Lucy Morgan, who recently retired as St. Petersburg Times Tallahassee bureau chief after 37 years at the newspaper.

Also chosen were Tillie Fowler, a former member of Congress from Jacksonville who died last March, and Caridad Asensio of Boca Raton, whose medical clinic in Palm Beach County provides free care for migrant farm workers and their families.

All three will be inducted in a ceremony March 14. Plaques featuring their photos and biographies will be permanently displayed on the walls of the Capitol's first-floor Rotunda.

"These three women have been paramount leaders in their fields," Bush said in a statement. "Their service to the people of Florida has made a difference in so many lives."

Morgan, 65, and reporter Jack Reed won the Pulitzer Prize, journalism's highest award, in 1985 for exposing mismanagement in the Pasco County sheriffs' office. She became the Times' capital bureau chief the following year.

Fowler was elected to Congress in 1992 and kept a promise to retire after eight years when she was at the peak of her influence on Capitol Hill. Nicknamed the "Steel Magnolia" for her low key tenacity, she championed defense spending.

Fowler died last March at age 62, two days after she suffered a brain hemorrhage.

Asnesio, 74, founded the Migrant Association of South Florida in 1989. Three years later, she opened the Caridad Health Clinic, the only one of its kind in the region that caters to migrant worker families.

The Florida Women's Hall of Fame was created in 1982 and made permanent in 1992. Each year, the Florida Commission on the Status of Women nominates 10 women for inclusion. The governor chooses up to three.

Morgan will be the second full-time Tallahassee reporter to join the Women's Hall of Fame. The first was Barbara Frye, who served for 38 years as United Press International's Tallahassee bureau chief and was inducted posthumously in 1984.

Morgan also is the second Pulitzer winner to join the elite group. Author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, among the best-known of Florida authors, won the prize in 1938 for her novel The Yearling. Rawlings joined the hall in 1986.

[Last modified November 30, 2005, 19:24:22]