Edith Evans Asbury

Edith Evans Asbury (née Snyder; June 30, 1910 – October 30, 2008) was an American journalist who spent nearly 30 years as a reporter with The New York Times. She took a job as a reporter with the Knoxville News Sentinel from 1933 to 1937.

In 1937, at the height of the Great Depression, she left Knoxville and her husband (whom she later divorced) and headed to Manhattan despite the lack of any pre-planned prospects for work and wired her editor that she was quitting her job. In New York, she found a sequence of jobs with the New York Post, the New York City Housing Authority, the Associated Press and the New York World-Telegram and Sun, where she served as assistant editor for women's news.

She married journalist Herbert Asbury in 1945; the two divorced in 1958. It was the second marriage for both. Her husband was best known for his 1928 book The Gangs of New York, which was later adapted as a screenplay for the 2002 Martin Scorsese film. Her 1971 marriage to Times assistant managing editor Robert E. Garst ended with his death in 1980. Her first byline in the paper was a story from December 5, 1952, on a ceremony welcoming Saint Nicholas held in Westchester County, New York. Others among her earliest stories with the paper included items about holiday shopping on Fifth Avenue, a lost canary, and the Fifth Avenue Easter Parade. Her reporting in 1958 about an unwritten ban on counseling and prescription of birth control in New York City hospitals was credited with helping overturn the ban.

Asbury was known for her tenacity; New York City Mayor John Lindsay was said to have been so angered by her that he smashed his telephone after slamming down the receiver. Into her 90s, Asbury would call reporters at the paper, offering suggestions on potential stories that had been overlooked. Asbury was recognized in 1967 with the Page One Award from the Newspaper Guild of New York for a series about a family's successful battle to adopt a blind foster child.

Asbury was also one of the first women allowed to join the Inner Circle Show in 1973.

Death and legacy Her health had deteriorated for two years, and she died at her home in Greenwich Village in Manhattan at age 98, on October 30, 2008. A specific cause of death was not disclosed.