“Heavens no,” she answered once when asked her if she had ever considered entering a post-game locker room. I mean, back then it was just unheard of.”Īll that happened decades before the controversy of women writers being barred from - or allowed into - the supposed sanctity of men’s locker rooms.
Perian once told me she thought many of the newspaper editors “were intrigued by the idea of a woman sports writer. The New York Times was among the subscribers. The North American Newspaper Alliance learned of the column and sought to publish on a much wider scale. The column was instantly a hit, so she approached The Clarion Ledger about also publishing the column. After marriage, Perian approached the editor of the Clarksdale paper with the idea of writing a weekly column about life in New York during the football season. She had been the editor of her college newspaper, “The Spectator,” at what is now Mississippi University for Women. And she had great sources, people named Gifford, Rote, Summerall and Chunkin’ Charlie Conerly. She wrote cleverly in terms even a novice fan could easily digest. She took a complicated sport and broke it down in the simplest of terms. In her columns and her book, she wrote intelligently and with much wit. And he had lean, low-slung lines peculiar to athletes and Cadillacs. Perian was writing about meeting Charlie at a swimming pool in 1947: “I was immediately taken with his dark good looks and engaging shyness. Consider this paragraph from her book “Backseat Quarterback” first published by Doubleday in 1963.
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Once, she appeared on the old “What’s My Line” TV show and dazzled both the panel and audience and was joined late in the show by her husband. She was the first female member of the Football Writers of American Association (FWAA).
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In the 1950s, Charlie and Perian were the toast of New York - he the ruggedly handsome quarterback and the original Marlboro man, she the Southern belle with movie star glamour, a naturally warm personality and all that charm and wit.įrom all accounts, she was the first female sports writer, who wrote columns for the New York Times, among other publications. On occasion, one of Charlie’s old Giants teammates, Gifford, Pat Summerall or Kyle Rote - all dead now - would emcee the event as a favor to Perian and a tribute to their pal, Charlie. Perian remained very much a part of Mississippi’s sports scene in her later years, usually presenting the C Spire Conerly Trophy to the state’s top college football player at the annual Conerly Trophy Banquet. She was 94 and had out-lived her beloved Charlie by 25 years.
Perian Conerly died Thursday in her hometown of Clarksdale.
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