Betty Flood, of Cuyler News Service, died Wednesday in Albany — the Insurance Advocate mourns the passing of our long-time contributor and dear friend

From TimesUnion, http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/270228/betty-flood-83-cut-a-path-for-women-at-state-capitol/

Betty Flood, a trailblazing Capitol correspondent whose work reached from Gov. Averell Harriman’s administration to this month, died Wednesday at Memorial Hospital in Albany. She was 83.

Flood — whose married named was Elizabeth Flood Morrow — operated Cuyler News Service, an independent operation that worked out of a small office on the Capitol’s third floor, and focused on providing stories to the financial media. (It’s located between the two offices occupied by the Times Union.)

She continued to work well past her 80th birthday, and regularly wedged her diminutive frame into the tight-packed Capitol Q&As referred to as “gaggles,” armed with a bulky tape recorder from the pre-digital age. In April, she was among the reporters in the press pen at Donald Trump’s rally at the Times Union Center in Albany. She estimated to this reporter that it was the 13th or 14th presidential campaign she had covered.

Flood, who had grown increasingly frail in recent months, was taken to the hospital on Sunday after suffering a fall at her home in Loudonville. She went into surgery on Monday and never regained consciousness.

Last year, Flood recalled her friendship with Happy Rockefeller, the governor’s second wife, and evenings of Dubonnet at the governor’s mansion, where Flood would slip in through a back door. Flood said she and Happy Rockefeller “would sit and gab on Sunday afternoons for an hour or two and talk about clothes and legislation and anything on her mind. She was so warm and nice.”

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In a statement, state Senate Republican Leader John Flanagan called her “a pioneering journalism professional and highly respected member of the Capitol’s press corps … who covered state government from a unique historical perspective that will be greatly missed.”

The Albany native covered the administrations of nine successive governors. Her many published profiles included a 1981 New York magazine cover story “The Governor’s Lady,” about Gov. Hugh Carey’s wife Evangeline.

She worked as a reporter for years at the Capitol before women were permitted to become members of the Legislative Correspondents Association, primarily writing for financial and trade publications. She was interviewed by The New York Times in 2008 for a story on the hard times the news business was beginning to experience.

“I worked for The American Banker. Gone,” she told the Times. “I worked for The Bond Buyer. They’re gone, too.”

In 1966, she co-founded the Women’s Press Club of New York, which advances the professional interests of women in the media and communications professions, and awards scholarships to aspiring women journalists.

After starting the club, she organized a public debate and scholarship fundraiser in 1971 on the topic of “Women’s Liberation — What Else?” with Barney Fowler, a columnist for the Times Union who was introduced as “a leading male chauvinist of the Albany press corps.”

His debate opponent was Betty Friedan, author of “The Feminine Mystique” and the co-founder and first president of the National Organization for Women. The event was held after New York legalized abortion and two years before Roe v. Wade.

Flood could be sharp in her criticisms. In 2006, she publicly lambasted the leadership of the Women’s Press Club for organizing a year-end panel discussion without a female contributor, calling it “very discouraging and disgusting” in a widely distributed email, according to the now-defunct media site Albany Eye.

She was a patron of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, and in recent years was an antiques dealer on the side, selling collectibles in a shop in Ballston Spa.

She was predeceased by her husband Gerald Morrow, an Albany food broker and businessman; her brothers John and Joseph Gaucas; and sisters, Ann Gaucas Crounse, Mrs. Charles Barnes and Catherine Gaucas.

(Thanks to Kyle Hughes of NYSNYS.com.)