Lying About Typing
I graduated from Georgetown in May 1984 and immediately started working as an assistant to the fashion editor of The Washington Post.
I hadn’t planned to work at a newspaper. I hadn’t planned anything. As my classmates were being scouted for investment banking jobs or applying to grad school, I secretly thought I might waitress for a while and think it all over.
The fact that I landed a job at the Post was serendipitously related to my junior year in Paris and to my dad, the former publisher of Women’s Wear Daily James Brady. His old friend, the designer Emanuel Ungaro, had invited me out a few times in during my semester abroad because my father assumed I would not know how to take care of myself at age 20. He wasn’t completely wrong.
Emanuel treated me to dinner, drove me around the Arc de Triomphe in a Mini Cooper (to certain death, I assumed, the way the French drive), taught me how to curse in Italian, how not to shove food in your face after taking a sip of super special red wine, and how showing up as yourself is better than dressing like a disco queen. Short in stature but big in charm and elegance, he also tried to seduce me. Isn’t that what Frenchmen do when they are asked to look after someone’s daughter? It was all so European. But I was not used to this world. It was my father’s world and I was an outsider. I was also the “good girl” of Tom Petty’s yet-to-be-written song “Free Fallin’” — I loved Jesus, my college boyfriend and America, and stayed true to all.
When I returned to Georgetown, an item appeared in The Washington Post one Sunday morning. Nina Hyde, the fashion editor of the Post, had interviewed Ungaro for her weekly column about a new perfume he had created called Diva.
“What’s a diva?“ Nina asked him.
Ungaro responded, “I met a young girl, Susan Brady, a student at Georgetown who wants to be Secretary of State. That’s a diva.” I did tell Emanuel that I aspired to become Secretary of State. I was attending L’Institut des Sciences Politiques, the elite school for government studies. I took all my poli sci courses in France because I thought the students at Georgetown were too competitive. Yet I dreamed of one day being appointed to travel the world in the service of humanity and unity.
Nina pointed out in the article that I was the daughter of Ungaro’s friend, the influential editor James Brady. Dad knew Nina Hyde. He was friendly with the Post’s editor in chief Ben Bradlee. Newspapermen and women knew each other.
I read the Style section every Sunday, mostly the wedding announcements, but never imagined my naive aspirations of engineering world peace would lead me to work for Nina — a brilliant journalist, mentor, a tough and phenomenal woman — the week following graduation.
When I called Nina to thank her for writing about me, she asked me out to lunch. We met at the Madison Hotel across from the Post building on 15th Street NW and, over chef salads, she peppered me with questions about my post-college plans. I said I had no idea. She raised an eyebrow. I needed to work on my interview skills.
A few weeks later Nina called to say her assistant was being promoted to copy editor. Would I be interested in “shlepping shopping bags” to fashion shoots and typing up stories. “You can type right?”
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“I’m an English major!” I laughed, accepting the position.
It wasn’t a lie. I typed term papers all the time. What I didn’t know was that I couldn’t type under pressure or when being watched. I’d soon discovered that when Nina dictated a story to me or stood over me as I typed a letter, I froze.
Once, Nina was at the fashion shows in Milan and didn’t have an office to write up her reports and send them over the wire. Her editor told her to call me and dictate. And in those early days of computers, your editor could see what you were writing as you wrote it.
Nina started reading her notes, “Today in Milan the designer Georgio Armani unveiled his fall collection with elegant colors and textures…”
I typed: “today in milan the dsigner getiorio aermabi unveils his collectin for gall rrahturing cobrang colowns and textures.”
The Style editor, the formidable Mary Hadar, came running across the newsroom yelling, “What are you writing? What is Nina saying? What’s happening?”
“I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it! I’ll remember what she’s saying!” I cried, cradling the phone with one ear, typing with one hand and waving off my boss’s boss with the other.
Then Nina said, “Okay, read it back.”
It was baptism by fire.
They didn’t suffer fools at the paper. I learned very quickly to step up. I worked hard. Maybe I was a nepo baby — my dad was an important journalist — but before long I had bylines, firmly encouraged by Nina. My first article, about clothes for dogs, was called “Dog Togs for Yuppie Puppies.”
When I foolishly left the Post to work in magazines in New York, Nina threw me a farewell party in the newsroom. Even Ben Bradlee came, but I think it was because there was cake. I was on the receiving end of true warmth from the paper’s seasoned professionals — these writers, editors, photographers and staff who had and would continue to cover history, and would not let democracy die in darkness.
This essay first appeared on Life in the 60s/Substack.
