Mary Ann Yodelis Smith, 1935–1994

Abstract

Her spirit was empowering. But words cannot convey the extent of MaryAnn Yodelis Smith's influence, how widely respected she was, or how deeply she touched the lives of those who knew her. While battling cancer for eight years, her continued dedication to her work and profession, her constant focus the future, on planning her next adventure, showed others how to live. She could have left no better memory.Throughout her career, she identified with her students, with the suppressed abilities of the diffident, with the frustrations of the marginalized, with the needs of her profession. And she was identified with in the minds of so many that the words of Professor Betty Winfield of the University of Missouri say in graceful understatement what most of us feel: AEJMC will not be the same [without her]. I'm going to miss her so much.MaryAnn was very active in the History Division, serving in every office early in her career and in numerous ways since. Widely respected as a scholar of media history and communication law, she presented papers at scholarly conferences and published research for more than twenty years in books and journals in mass communication, journalism history and law. Her best known scholarly work is in journalism history--on the economics of the eighteenth-century American press and press freedom history.Her passing leaves a great gap in our field, said her former major professor Harold L. now professor emeritus, University of Wisconsin. He cited the late historian Merrill Jensen, a member of her Ph.D. committee, who was so impressed with her work that he announced before the final exam, Nelson, if by some gross stupidity, Journalism will not grant Yodelis the Ph.D., the History Department will!Still, MaryAnn's greatest legacy may be forever muted in history. It has to do with overcoming on her own, and demonstrating by example that women could overcome extreme gender-related hardships in academic and career choices. Women of her era had to make painful sacrifices to accomplish goals now taken for granted, sacrifices that later generations simply don't know about and don't have to consider making, thanks, at least in part, to her. Those who came later received and use a gift they don't know is a gift or that they received it, don't know at what cost it was gained and passed on, don't know of her legacy. Although sexism continues and remains as ugly, she was among that generation of women in this field who bore the brunt of diffusing its power, a generation whose story bas not really been told--and I doubt it can now be understood by others. …