Trude Feldman, White House Reporter Who Got Access, Dies at 97

“Her path was neither Pollyannish nor naïve, but intelligently idealistic,” her nephew, Rabbi Feldman, wrote in The Jewish Standard on Feb. 2, although he acknowledged that “superficially, her generosity toward her subjects could invite mockery.”

As it did in 1988, on “Saturday Night Live.”

In a skit, Robin Williams, playing a beleaguered President Reagan, is advised by an aide through his earpiece at a news conference to call on Ms. Feldman. She promptly says on cue: “Mr. President, this may seem like a lob — but what would you like to talk about?”

Still, in his 1995 memoir, “Call the Briefing!,” Marlin Fitzwater, a press secretary to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, said that Ms. Feldman, along with Sarah McClendon of McClendon News Service and Evelyn Y. Davis of Highlights and Lowlights, was a pillar of “the First Ladies’ Club” of the White House press corps.

“Trude has perfected her coverage of the White House based on one simple principle,” Mr. Fitzwater wrote. “No one wants to be rude to an old lady.”

He added, “The most remarkable aspect of Trude was that she could write, smoothly and well, and she got published.”

A granddaughter, daughter and sister of rabbis, Ms. Feldman expressed the hope that she was making a modest contribution to Mideast peace when she asked King Hussein of Jordan to dance at a White House reception. (At 4-foot-11, she said, she was the only woman short enough to be a suitable partner for him.)

Sometimes, though, what was indulged as eccentricity crossed a line.

Ms. Feldman had a small apartment not far from the White House, but from 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., seven days a week, she could routinely be found behind a stack of newspapers in the Executive Mansion’s basement briefing room. Once, her press credentials were suspended for 90 days after a security camera caught her snooping late at night around a press assistant’s desk.