Gay Pauley Sehon

Class of 1942

Hired immediately after graduating from Marshall’s journalism program, Gay Pauley Sehon started a 42-year career with United Press International. She was first with the Charleston, W. Va., bureau where she covered state politics and the capital newsbeat. She soon moved to Louisville, Ky. to organize and direct the state bureau. In 1947, she moved to New York where she served as columnist, was named the women’s editor in 1957 and senior editor in 1977, becoming the first female senior editor with UPI.  Sehon was a regular panelist on a New York television program “Ladies of the Press,” a member of Women in Communications, recognized with Theta Sigma Phi’s National Headliner Award, and named Daughter of the Year by the West Virginia Society. She was one of few Western reporters to visit China, and she won the New York Chapter Matrix Award for reporting on the People’s Republic of China. Sehon continued as a freelance writer after her retirement from UPI in 1985.

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