The Maureen Dowd you've never seen

NY Times columnnist reveals her first great love, her family's Irish ties and her take on Obama, Bush, Biden and Geffen

“They thought he was a “millunare, as he pronounced it,” Peggy says, laughing.

Their father had tried to set up an AOH museum in Washington for Irish artifacts. A priest in Massachusetts sent a holy medal that he had received from the mother of Michael Collins. He swore Collins wore it the day he died in the Republican ambush at Beal na Blath outside Cork city.

It remains one of the Dowd family's greatest treasures. Maureen wants to talk to the Irish Government about it.

Their father died in 1971. On her own deathbed many years later in 2005 Peggy Dowd talked out loud to him, leading Maureen and Peggy to believe he was waiting for her.  Their mother was hale and hearty for many years before succumbing to old age at 97.

Peggy was going blind towards the end. Maureen would go over to her and turn on the daily Mass at 8:30. 

Her mother loved Tim Russert and "Meet the Press." She confessed she hated going blind because it meant she couldn't see Tim Russert any more. The late great NBC anchor returned the favor, often wishing her a happy birthday on air. Somewhere in a green swathe of heaven that TV twosome continues.

When Peggy died the fulsome Washington Post obituary heading said simply: “Font of Advice.”

In many ways that has never changed. Maureen’s New York Times columns could be read in some ways as letters to the mother she still misses profoundly, full of the piercing insight and gossipy bon mots Peggy Dowd loved.

The old Irish rebel still lives on in the daughter. Mike Quill, the great union leader and 1920s IRA activist, is alleged to have told the immigration man letting him into America that, “if there’s a government here I’m against it.” Sometimes it seems Maureen feels that way too.

All these years later, the little girl that her father worried was too shy to get on in life has certainly proved him wrong on that score.

Dowd’s meteoric rise to the top of the media pile was achieved through sheer dint of hard work and an unerring eye for the critical detail that everyone else was missing. Along the way she has ended forever the cozy view of women writers as softly-softlys who leave the meaty stuff to the men.

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Nster.com