BEAUFAIT, DORIS E. O’DONNELL (21 June 1921–27 Sept. 2015) was one of Cleveland’s pioneer woman journalists, specializing in crime, racial, and investigative reporting for four local newspapers over a span of four decades. Born in Cleveland, she was the daughter of John L. O’Donnell, a city firefighter, and Stella A. O’Donnell, a Democratic ward leader. She graduated from James Ford Rhodes High School, where she was editor of the Rhodes Review. With no further journalistic training, she was hired by NATHANIEL (Nat) HOWARD, editor of the CLEVELAND NEWS, during the manpower shortage of World War II, only the fifth woman in the paper’s newsroom. Howard assigned her to such “stunt features” as being a test driver at the Cadillac Tank Plant, a matron at the Cuyahoga County Jail, and a cigarette girl at the Alpine Village nightclub. In 1948 she reported on two weeks she had spent sharing the daily routines of an east side Black family.
Assigned to the police beat, O’Donnell covered the SHEPPARD MURDER CASE, in which she secured an exclusive interview with. Susan Hayes, mistress of Dr. Sam Sheppard, the BAY VILLAGE osteopath accused of killing his wife. (Though Sheppard’s guilty verdict was later overturned, O’Donnell “never wavered in my belief that Sam killed Marilyn.”). In 1956 O’Donnell became one of the first Western female journalists to travel behind the Iron Curtain for a series of stories on everyday life in the Soviet Union. Throughout her stay she was frustrated by the protective screen between her Intourist guides and ordinary Russians. At the behest of Cleveland Ukrainians from home, she asked one guide why Ukraine wasn’t independent and was told “We are independent. We are autonomous, We can secede from Russia anytime we want.” After seeing the trials of some of her colleagues in getting copy through the censorship, O’Donnell decided to defer submitting her stories until after she left the U.S.S.R. They ran in the News in 39 parts from 6 June—20 July 1956.
After the News was sold to the CLEVELAND PRESS in 1960, O’Donnell joined the staff of the CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER along with HOWARD BEAUFAIT, a News copy editor whom she had married in 1957. For the Plain Dealer she covered the HOUGH RIOTS, the GLENVILLE SHOOTOUT, and wrote a multi-part series on “Cleveland’s Negroes: Frustrations/Hope” in 1967. She and Beaufait later worked for the Lake County News-Herald and the Greensburg Tribune-Review in Pennsylvania. Following the death of Beaufait, O’Donnell returned to Cleveland in 1991 and covered its outlying suburbs for the Plain Dealer until retiring in 1996. Inducted into the PRESS CLUB OF CLEVELAND Hall of Fame in 1984, she was later extolled by the Plain Dealer’s Brent Larkin as “Cleveland’s first superstar reporter.” Living in Summit County, she published an autobiography, Front-Page Girl, in 2009. O’Donnell died in Cleveland and is buried in Ligonier Valley Cemetery, Ligonier, Pennsylvania.
John Vacha