Clarissa Start – 2016
There were few women working in the newsroom of the Post-Dispatch when Clarissa Start started her career there in 1938. That career gave her the opportunity to interview celebrities for the paper’s feature-laden Everyday Magazine section. She began writing her column, “The Little Woman,” in 1955, sharing with her large female audience her own perspective on family life. When she retired from the paper in 1972, that column ended, but her Post-Dispatch writing career continued with “The Happy Gardener” until she was 85, for a total of 64 years in the paper. During her long career she also found time to write ten books.