Linda Grant, a journalist for 30 years, died on August 11, 2022, in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 82. Her career began in 1966 when she moved to Saigon, Vietnam, with her then-husband, Newsweek Bureau Chief Everett Martin. There she free-lanced, notably writing two cover stories for the New York Times Magazine. One, "The 37-Year War of the Village of Tan An Hoi," won the Overseas Press Club award for "Best Reporting from Abroad" in 1967. The story forecast the future defeat of the U.S. and South Vietnamese: Three months after its publication the North Vietnamese army launched the Tet Offensive that eventually led to victory of the U.S. and South Vietnam. By then Linda and Everett had moved to Hong Kong where for two years she was Economics Correspondent for the South China Morning Post. She also co-authored a local book called The Face of Hong Kong with photographer Frank Fischbeck and traveled widely. Linda resettled in New York in 1971 and joined Fortune as a researcher/reporter for seven years. There she became a leader in the fight for women's rights, joining hundreds of other women struggling to integrate newsrooms. The women sued and won, taking legal action against, among others, Fortune's publisher, Time-Life, for gender discrimination. The event became known as the "Good Girls' Revolt." In the process she was promoted to Fortune as associate editor and became one of its first women writers. Her husband was by then covering South America for the Wall Street Journal, giving her another continent to explore. Restless to move on, Linda moved to Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Times, where she was first a staff writer and eventually assistant business editor. In 1981 she married Charles Ruby, an attorney, and soon returned to New York, where she became New York Business Bureau Chief of the Los Angeles Times. During that period Linda won two Gerald Loeb Awards for distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. The first, about the outcome of corporate mergers, won the "large newspaper" category, beating entries from the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. In July 1983, Linda gave birth to a son, Joshua Nathaniel Ruby, and subsequently took seven years off work delighting in motherhood. In 1991 she returned to magazine writing with a 5,000-world story on Warren Buffett in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine. Buffett wrote her, "My friends all agree that you did a splendid job of catching me as I am." She rejoined Fortune in 1995 and retired in 1998. Linda was born on May 24, 1940, to Esther and Virgil Grant in Peoria, Illinois, where her father became Chief Financial Officer of Caterpillar and an architect of its foreign operations. When her family moved to Geneva, Switzerland, in the 1960s, she traveled around Europe from their base. She graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. in Journalism in 1963 and worked for the Saturday Evening Post and Newsweek before leaving for the Far East. Friends around the globe will remember her vivacity, warmth, originality, wit, compassion—and always her questions. Linda's survivors include her partner, Dr. Peter Medine, her beloved son Josh, his wife, Dr. Margaret Samuels-Kalow, and their three daughters Ami, Ellie, and Miriam, who lit up her retirement with delirious joy. She also forged special relationships over the years with two stepdaughters: Dr. Jennifer Martin of Olympia, Washington, and Sarah Ruby of Brooklyn, New York. When Sarah's mother died an untimely death at age 60, Linda became her second Mom. She was overjoyed to become grandmother to Sarah's daughter, Lia Cameron Caruso, born in 2008. A sister, Lois Grant, an architect from Atlanta, Georgia, predeceased Linda. After retirement, Linda was elected to the Rye (N.Y.) School Board and was a volunteer at Hospice of Westchester (N.Y.). She moved to Tucson, Arizona in 2001, and became the partner of Peter, a Professor of English at the University of Arizona, an old friend from Northwestern days. Together they spent three months a year in London—where Peter read at the British Library—and three months in New York, where they attended plays, ballets, operas, symphonies, and chamber-music concerts. As a retired Emeritus Professor Peter taught Shakespeare, Milton, Joyce, and Jane Austen, among others, in a program for retirees called the Humanities Seminars, which Linda regularly attended. She read voraciously and was an accomplished pianist, a disciplined swimmer, and a devoted Democrat. Linda was listed in the 1979-84 Who's Who of American Women, the 1999 Who's Who in Communication, and the 1999 Who's Who in America. She requested no memorial service or flowers, but suggested that contributions in her memory be made to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 330 Seventh Avenue, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10001.
