The subject of this column two weeks ago was Ross Garrigus, the longtime editor of the Vincennes Saint-Commercial.
This week we decided to focus on another fixture in local journalism: Addie McElfresh, who not only worked for the Sun-Commercial for years in various roles, but is also a prolific author with over 50 books published.
Elizabeth Adeline McElfresh, known to friends and newspaper readers as Addie, was born in Knox County to John and Martha Kelso McElfresh on May 28, 1918. She graduated from Bruceville High School and in 1936, at age 18, went to work for Sun Commercial, then located at 320 Busseron Street.
She started as a novice reporter and was later promoted to proofreader.
She left the newspaper in August 1942 to become a reporter for the Daily News in Troy, Ohio, but returned to the Sun-Commercial in the spring of 1943 as society editor. She served as society editor and feature writer for the next 12 years, and wrote a popular column called “Women You Know,” featuring local women making contributions to their communities. She left the newspaper in March 1955 to pursue a career as a freelance writer, one that was not subject to daily deadlines.
McElfresh had already established herself as a novelist before she retired from the Sun-Commercial, writing on an old Underwood typewriter. She is best known for her romance novels, most of which are set in a medical setting and feature doctors and nurses as protagonists. Her books include titles such as “Wings for Nurse Bennett” and “Hospital Hill.” She wrote two medical series, one featuring a nurse named Jill Nolan, and the “Dr. Jane” series.
She also wrote mysteries and children’s books: she published her second mystery, Murder with Roses, in the summer of 1950. In the early 1960s, she wrote two children’s books for the Indianapolis publisher Bobbs-Merrill, Summer Change in 1960 and To Each Her Dream in 1961. She sometimes wrote under a pen name.
In the fall of 1963, the Sun-Commercial serialized her novel, “Ann Kenyon: Surgeon.”
In January 1966, McElfresh assumed an entirely new role when she was named director of public relations and volunteer services at Good Samaritan Hospital, a position she held until 1969, when she left to pursue writing again full time.
Finally, in late June 1973, Addie McElfresh returned to the Sun-Commercial as a reporter at large, and resumed her job as women’s editor in August. In early 1975, she became city affairs editor, and in November of that year, she was given the entirely new role of bicentennial editor, responsible for all editorial aspects of the paper’s U.S. Bicentennial coverage. She later wrote a popular column called “Country Journal” about life in Knox County.
In late 1978, Sun-Commercial publisher William E. Brooks appointed McElfresh, who had started in the newspaper business more than 40 years earlier, as the paper’s first woman editor in chief. She served as editor for three years before returning to writing romance novels.
Addie McElfresh died on July 3, 2015, at Good Samaritan Hospital, at the age of 97. She never married and focused on her career as a newspaper reporter and author.
