Complete Story
 

09/13/2018

Former Blade editor, columnist Eileen Foley passes away

From The Blade

Eileen Foley, an award-winning Blade editor who asserted the public’s right to official records and meetings and a columnist who summoned reader praise and protest, died Friday in Hospice of Northwest Ohio, Perrysburg Township. She was 84.

She had metastatic breast cancer, her nephew Alain Algazi said.

 

Ms. Foley of West Toledo was a Blade associate editor for eight years, retiring on Sept. 1, 2004. She continued to write book reviews and then letters to the Readers’ Forum.

She wrote editorials, but also a regular column under her byline on topics secular and religious, concerning criminal justice, medical care, and her Maine heritage. Generally supportive of the ACLU, Ms. Foley in defending gun ownership called it the “All-but-one Civil Liberties Union.”

“She was very feisty in her column,” said John Robinson Block, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Blade. “She evoked much more reaction, pro and con, to her views than any other column. She seemed to strike a chord with readers.”

Foremost, she was an excellent writer, said Tom Walton, who retired as editor and vice president of The Blade.

“I’d say she had the journalistic instincts to challenge authority and ask tough questions,” Mr. Walton said.

In 1999, the Ohio Newspaper Women’s Association awarded her first place in the investigative reporting category for a piece about the conviction of a man for the shaking death of his infant son.

Continue Reading>>

Printer-Friendly Version