Ruth Brod (1911–1980)

Ruth Hagy Brod, known professionally as Ruth Geri Hagy, was born Ruth Fleischman in Manhattan and grew up in Chicago. As a small child, she was considered a musical prodigy, giving piano recitals at age six. She studied music at Crane Junior College and received a bachelor’s degree in music at the Chicago College of Music in 1929. That same year, she married her first husband, Anatol Frikin, with whom she had a daughter. After his death, she married Lewis Hagy in 1932. After graduation from college, Ruth turned to several different careers. She moved to Hollywood and became an editor for movie and radio magazines.
From Hollywood, she went to Philadelphia, where she wrote features for the Philadelphia Ledger from 1938 to 1941. Over the years, she wrote for various other newspapers, including the New York Graphic, the Chicago Daily American, the Chicago Daily Times, the Chicago Daily News, and the Philadelphia Bulletin. She also worked as a radio reporter and documentary filmmaker.
During World War II, Ruth Hagy served as publicity director for the United War Chest campaigns and was a member of the executive committee of the U.S. Savings Bond division of the U.S. Treasury.
In 1946, she became women’s editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin. In 1961, she traveled to Latin America and served as an educational television adviser to the Colombian government while producing a Peace Corps documentary film. She also produced a television series on Asian women and was a correspondent in Southeast Asia for the now-defunct North American Newspaper Alliance. She was a Far East correspondent for NBC Radio Press International and others.
Widowed a second time, she married Ed Albert Thomas Brod in 1954. In 1962, she returned to New York and formed Ruth Hagy Productions and News Service. In the 1960s, she served as special assistant to Mayor Robert F. Wagner, and then founded and directed Mayor John V. Lindsay's Mayor's Coordinating Council, focusing in part on anti-poverty efforts. She co-authored two books, The Edgar Cayce Handbook of Health Through Drugless Therapy and Ena Twigg, Medium. As a literary agent, she represented Allard K. Lowenstein, the US congressman and civil rights activist who was murdered in 1980, and James (Jimmy) Hoffa, leader of the Teamsters union, whose memoirs she was negotiating to publish at the time of his disappearance in 1975.
Ruth Hagy Brod paved the way for a greater role for women in journalism and public service.