One of “Murrow’s boys,” Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, had eyes and ears for the extraordinary.

BY COLIN W. SARGENT

The first Maine-connected woman to earn a pilot’s license in the U. S. was Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson (1905-2020). But flying an Immelmann or shooting a dead-stick landing were the least of her accomplishments.

York residents remember “Marvin” as the lofty owner of River House, the biggest mansion on the York River. Oh, that lady! The one with better family connections than an Auchincloss.

She was pretty good with a camera too. Dismissed as a rich kid, she became a world-class news and art photographer who caught the 20th century with her high-speed shutter–sometimes when it wasn’t looking.

Society’s Child

“Traveling to Europe in 1939 on photojournalism assignments, Breckinridge was in Switzerland when the Nazis invaded Poland, starting World War II,” According to the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. “She traveled to London to photograph the evacuation of English children, one of only four American photographers in England for the first months of the war. In November, Edward R. Murrow invited Breckinridge to join him in a CBS radio broadcast about the changes the war had brought to English villages, and then others. At his suggestion she took on a sonorous tone while at the mike, and he hired her as the first female news broadcaster for the CBS World News Roundup to report from Europe.

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.