Star reporter, trailblazer achieved many firsts in adventurous career

Mary Bostwick wasn’t just a journalist for the Indianapolis Star — she was a news personality before it was popular. Bostwick was a feisty police reporter, sports reporter,stunt journalist and poet who joined the Star staff in 1914. At 21, she was hired as its first and youngest police reporter.

Bostwick’s advice for making it in a “man’s world” was, “you have to drink with them, swear with them and jump on the back of the police wagon with them” to be successful. Bostwick also was known to keep a loaded pistol in her desk drawer.

During World War I, Bostwick served as a registrar at Lilly Base Hospital 32 in France, but she also managed to write a few columns for her home newspaper. Following the war, she returned to journalism.

In 1920, just days after the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, a constable from the justice of the peace walked into the newsroom of the Indianapolis Star and served Bostwick with a summons to serve on a jury. This made Bostwick the first woman to be called for jury duty in Indiana.

Bostwick was no stranger to sports. She covered baseball, football and basketball. She had a great love of aviation and racing and was in a good town for both those loves. As a stunt reporter, Bostwick chronicled her adventures in a balloon race, a dirigible, airogyro and flew with barnstorming pilots and former World War I flying aces.

Bostwick’s greatest stunt occurred in 1922 when she became the first woman to ride in a race car on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at racing speed, which was 110 mph at the time. Track officials were unaware the person dressed in khaki pants and seated next to driver Howdy Wilcox was a woman. Her account of the experience: “We passed Jules Goux in his Ballot, with a terrific roaring, and went on. A horrible thing began to happen. The wind, coming over the front edge of the hood at this terrific pace, caught me firmly by the neck and began to shake. I discovered to my horror, that I couldn’t get my head back where it belonged. I figured that in about another second I’d lose my head, and the thought depressed me. I had to hold on to my head to keep it from popping off, with one hand, and pump oil with the other. Right there was where I began to ask myself why I had come.”

In 1927, Bostwick began writing the “Last Page Lyric.” Using a timely topic or news event, she created a column in rhyme.

Bostwick lived a life full of danger and adventure, but a simple slip on a patch of ice in the early 1950s nearly ended her career. She never fully recovered, and Mary Bostwick died in 1959 at age 73.

Follow Star visuals coordinator Dawn Mitchell on Twitter: @dawn_mitchell61.