Primarily from a digitized version of an article from The New York Times’s print archive.
May Craig, whose hats and tart questions to Presidents and politicians, made her one of the country’s best‐known news women for several decades. She was almost as famous for her flowered hats as for her penetrating and persistent questioning at Presidential news conferences. A colleague once described her as “the Washington press gallery nemesis of all evasive politicians.”
Nettlesome Questions
May Craig,Always at the Front
For many years she was a fixture on the NBC‐TV program “Meet the Press,” presenting peppery appearance and asking nettlesome questions.
Mrs. Craig herself described her questions as “dodge‐proof.” The Adlai E. Stevenson, former Governor of Illinois and later the Democratic candidate for President, after an interviewing session with Mrs. Craig, wrote to her to “please, be merciful” when he learned he was to be interviewed by her again.
With her hair tied in an old-fashioned knot, Mrs. Craig looked like the stereotype of a small‐town schoolteacher. She was once characterized as having “a mind as sharp as cider vinegar, as retentive as a lobster trap.” A magazine described her as “the small woman who always gets to the front row.”
May Craig died on July 15, 1975 at the age of 86.
Additional resources
“May Craig, Feisty Capital Writer, Dies.” New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/07/16/archives/may-craig-feisty-capital-writer-dies.html (accessed July 13, 2020)