Nina Mason Pulliam

Nina Mason Pulliam (September 19, 1906 – March 26, 1997) was an American journalist, author, and newspaper executive in Arizona and Indiana, where she was also well known as a philanthropist and civic leader.

Nina G. Mason was born on September 19, 1906, in rural Morgan County, Indiana, near Martinsville, to Laura L. (Gesaman) and Benjamin Franklin Mason.

She was one of the family's seven children.

Nina Mason developed a lifelong love of nature and wildlife during her youth.

As a teen she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and traveled on her own to the Arizona desert to live in a Phoenix home near Camelback Mountain to recover from her illness.

After returning to Indiana and completing high school, she began studying journalism at Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana, but left to enroll at Indiana University, and later studied at the University of New Mexico.

Eugene Pulliam's three children from his two previous marriages included a son, Eugene Smith Pulliam (1914–1999), and two daughters, Martha Corinne Pulliam, who later married James Cline Quayle, and Helen Suzanne Pulliam, who later married William Murphy.

Pulliam began her career as a journalist in Indiana and worked with her husband, Eugene C. Pulliam, as founding secretary-treasurer and a member of the board of Central Newspapers, Incorporated, the media holding company he established in 1934.

In addition to her work as a journalist, Nina Pulliam was founding secretary-treasurer and a board member of Central Newspapers, Incorporated, the company her husband formed in 1934.

During her husband's sixty-three years as a newspaper publisher, he operated forty-six newspapers across the United States.

Eugene S. Pulliam joined the family business in 1936 as news director at WIRE, an Indianapolis radio station his father owned at that time, and succeeded his father as publisher of the Indianapolis Star and the Indianapolis News in 1975.

Nina Mason married Eugene Collins Pulliam in 1941 following the death of his first wife, Myrta Smith Pulliam, in 1917, and his divorce from Marth Ott Pulliam in 1941.

When the magazine ceased publication during the Great Depression, she moved to Lebanon, Indiana, where she worked at the Lebanon Reporter for newspaper publisher Eugene C. Pulliam prior to their marriage in 1941.

Central Newspapers holdings included the Indianapolis Star, acquired in 1944; the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette, purchased in 1946; and the Indianapolis News, acquired in 1948; among others.

In 1945 Pulliam discovered that she was allergic to printers' ink, which affected her vision.

As a result of the affliction, she was no longer able to visit the publishing company's pressrooms and had to wait for newsprint to fully dry before touching the paper and reading its contents.

Over the years the couple traveled extensively, including a twenty-two-nation tour in 1947.

Her articles were later compiled into books: Befriended Journey (1948 booklet); South America, Land of the Future, Jewel of the Past (1951), coauthored with Eugene C. Pulliam; ''Iron Curtain Time: The Brave Bullies.

In 1953 Nina Pulliam also took a four-month solo trip to Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of Fiji.

During the extended trips Nina and Eugene Pulliam filed reports of their experiences, which were published in their newspapers.

In addition, she became the first woman to earn a private pilot's license in Indiana.

Pulliam's journalistic work of her travels was published in North American newspapers over a period of eleven years.

Glimpses Backstage Just Before the Storm (1956); I Traveled a Lonely Land: This is Australia and these are the Australians, as I saw them (1955); Are We Too Late in the Middle East?: On-the-scene report from Istanbul to Cairo (1958), coauthored with Eugene C. Pulliam; and We Are All in This Together'' (1970).

Following her husband's death in 1975, she served as president of the company until her retirement, in 1979, and as publisher of two of the company's newspapers, the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette, from 1975 to 1978.

She also wrote a series of articles that were published in North American newspapers and later compiled into several books.

Mason's and Pulliam's thirty-four year marriage ended with his death in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1975 at the age of eighty-six.

Nina and Eugene Pulliam worked together as a team in the newspaper industry until his death in 1975.

Nina Pulliam also served from 1975 to 1978 as publisher of the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette, which began in 1946.

Her stepson, Eugene S. Pulliam, became publisher of the company's two major newspapers in Indianapolis, the Indianapolis Star and the Indianapolis News.

She stepped down as publisher of the two Arizona newspapers in 1978 and retired from Central Newspapers in 1979, at the age of seventy-three.

Because an allergy to printers' ink affected her eyesight, Pulliam supported efforts to assist the blind.

For twenty years she was active in the National Society to Prevent Blindness.

She was also interested in Native American arts and culture as a supporter of the Heard Museum in Phoenix.

Following his death, she became president of Central Newspapers, a position she retained until in 1979.

James C. and Martha C. (Pulliam) Quayle were the parents of Dan Quayle, who served as the 44th Vice President of the United States from 1989 to 1993.

Nina Mason began her career in journalism at Farm Life, a national magazine published in Spencer, Indiana.

During her lifetime and through the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust, which was established after her death in 1997, Pulliam contributed to numerous philanthropic projects to support her varied interests in education, animals, nature, the outdoors, and Native American art and culture, especially programs in Arizona and Indiana.

A major initiative of her charitable trust is the Nina Mason Pulliam Legacy Scholars program.

Other recipients of her philanthropy in Arizona include the Phoenix Zoo, Heard Museum, Desert Botanical Garden, Arizona Humane Society, Phoenix's Burton Barr Central Library, the Arizona Recreation Center for the Handicapped, and a walking trail in the Grand Canyon National Park.

Indiana projects have included the Nina Mason Pulliam EcoLab at Marian University and the Nina Mason Pulliam Indianapolis Special Collections Room at the Indianapolis Public Library's Central Library.