Helen Dewar

Helen Dewar (August 7, 1936 – November 4, 2006) was a reporter for The Washington Post for 25 years. She worked at the Post for 43 years, rising through the ranks to cover the United States Senate for a quarter of a century (1979-2004). She worked for the Northern Virginia Sun from 1958- 1961 covering education.
David Broder, political pundit and longtime political columnist at The Post, called Dewar "one of the best reporters I ever knew". The last story written by her to be published in the Post, on January 20, 2005, predicted that, for various reasons, President George W. Bush would have difficulties having his legislative agenda enacted by Congress.

The Stockton, California-born Dewar graduated from Stanford University. Her first major reporting job was at the Northern Virginia Sun in Arlington, Virginia, where she covered education for two years. In 1961, she began her career at the Post in earnest, where she started out covering Arlington and Fairfax, as well as working on general assignments. By 1975 she had already spent a year on Capitol Hill. In 1976, she worked on Jimmy Carter's ultimately successful presidential campaign.

She died from breast cancer on November 4, 2006, aged 70, at a hospice in Alexandria, Virginia.

• Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress from the National Press Foundation - 1984
• The Washington Post's Eugene Meyer Award - 1987
• Virginia Communications Hall of Fame - inducted in January 2006
• Lifetime Achievement Award from the Washington Press Club Foundation (formerly known as the National Press Club) - 2006

She left no immediate survivors.