Mary Perot Nichols Opens Her Parachute

January 6, 1966, Vol. XI, No. 12

Mrs. Nichols Leaves Voice, Joins City

Mary Perot Nichols, an assistant editor of The Village Voice, will join the Lindsay administration on January 17 as press aide to Parks Commissioner Thomas P.F. Hoving.

Mrs. Nichols in her writing has been the most hard-hitting public critic of the parks policy of former Commissioner Newbold Morris and his predecessor, Robert Moses. She was consistently scornful of the standardized parks built by the Parks Department and of the standardized equipment placed in them.

She was also highly critical of the city's huge expenditure of money for the World's Fair and predicted correctly in 1964 that the Fair would not meet its financial obligations to the city. She castigated the metropolitan press for apparently closing its eyes to the failures of the Fair.

Mrs. Nichols' appointment as press aide is an indication that the new administration at City Hall intends to turn sharply from the policies of Moses and Morris that have prevailed since the 1930s.

Mrs. Nichols has been connected with The Voice for seven years as a reporter and an assistant editor. She is associated with many local civic organizations, including the Borough President's Community Planning Board No. 2, and is also a founder and vice chairman of the city-wide Council for Parks and Playgrounds.

[Each weekday morning, we post an excerpt from another issue of the Voice, going in order from our oldest archives. Visit our Clip Job archive page to see excerpts back to 1956.]