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When I think of Kay, these are some of the words that come to mind:
Gutsy, energetic, smart, driven, sharp-tongued, cantankerous, impatient, generous.

These conflict, you say. As Betty Anne would say: SO???!! Kay was a complex person. Despite her abundant skills, she could come across as self-effacing. I can’t recall her ever promoting herself even when she should have.

She was self-confident and sure-footed, however.

Kay Mills, a historian of women in journalism and civil rights and an inspirational member of the Journalism and Women Symposium’s founding board of directors, died Thursday, January 13, 2011, after a sudden heart attack in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 69.

Kay’s sudden death shocked and saddened her JAWS friends, who considered themselves Kay’s extended family, often housing her on her research trips. She in turn hosted countless friends who passed through Santa Monica.

An impressie group of nearly 70 women representing the best of journalism gathered at the Poynter Institute in May to talk about the past, present and future of women in the profession.

By Kay Mills, JAWS member

The first time I met Molly Ivins was in Houston back before half of you were born. A college friend of mine was working for one of the newspapers there (and they had two then, by golly) and so several of us got together and swilled down more bottles of Lone Star beer than I care to remember.

By Kay Mills, JAWS member

Nancy Hicks Maynard, who helped bring enormous changes for diversity within the media, died Sept. 21, 2008, in Los Angeles. She was 61. Her family said that she had been ill for several months and that her death resulted from the failure of several major organs, according to the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

Eileen’s death Thursday, Nov. 2, 2001, resonated with many people who she helped over the years. Her obituaries in the New York Times and in the Washington Post tell part of her story; the Maynard Institute tells another; the Washington Press Club another; a legacy.com site tells more. Here are some of our JAWS’ members thoughts.

By Glenda Holste

The Joan Cook Fellowship Fund honors the extraordinary life of Joan Riddell Cook with grants to bring young women, particularly women of color, into JAWS at the annual fall camp. Cook, who died of breast cancer in 1995 in New York, was a founding director of JAWS, a journalist, a union leader, a moral leader and generous friend to three generations of people engaged in the work of making the world a more just place. She was one of seven named plaintiffs — and a moving force — in a class action sex discrimination suit against the New York Times filed in 1974.

By Linda Deutsch, AP Special Correspondent

Theo Wilson, a journalist whose coverage of America’s history-making trials from Sam Shepard to John De Lorean made her the dean of trial reporters, died early Friday (January 1996) in Los Angeles.

By Kay Mills, JAWS member

Frances Lewine, pioneering journalist and longtime Journalism and Women Symposium member, died on January 19, the day before she would have celebrated her 87th birthday by going to the races.

“So many festivities were planned” for Fran’s birthday, said her longtime friend and former Associated Press colleague Linda Deutsch. A friend from CNN, where Fran had worked since 1981, had arranged to have that day’s fifth race at Charles Town Races named for her. “Fran’s lucky number was five.”

By Glenda Holste

Nancy Woodhull was at the podium introducing linguist Deborah Tannen, a long- sought-after speaker for JAWS camp. Woodhull had arranged to get Tannen on our dance card in Napa last fall. They were, after all, friends from when Woodhull was a news executive who had read “You Just Don’t Understand.” Woodhull not only got the message, she passed it on.