I'm sad to report that one of National Underwriter's former Washington editors, Mary Jane Fisher–dubbed the “Helen Thomas of the insurance press” by my colleague, NU Life Weekly Editor Steve Piontek–passed away recently at the age of 90. For those of you Inside The Beltway who dealt with Mary Jane as a source or subject of her stories, you'll no doubt remember her as I do–as a classy, fair-minded, savvy professional. She was one of a kind–a keen reporter who never lost her passion for journalism, and never let herself be tainted by the cynicism that poisoned so many Capitol Hill beat reporters.

As I said in her Washington Post obit, Mary Jane never lost the thrill of the chase, cutting through the myriad machinations in D.C. to get to the heart of the matter at hand. She never failed to focus on the impact of D.C. developments on our agent and insurance company readers, rather than get caught up–as it's so easy to do–in the minutia of procedural votes and backroom horse-trading that dominates Washington.

I will always remember her as the elegant lady who followed politics with the same passion I saved for baseball. She knew all the key players, their strengths and weaknesses, the IOUs they had outstanding and the markers they held against others. She took a special delight in getting to the bottom line, which in Washington back then and now so often comes down to naked power-brokering, rather than principles.