Longtime reporter later became Pat Nixon's press secretary, aide to U.S. ambassador in Rome

Gerry van der Heuvel Donovan, 91, a former journalist who was press secretary to first lady Pat Nixon, died Oct. 25 of congestive heart failure at her home in St. Petersburg, Fla.

She was hired in 1968 by members of Richard M. Nixon's incoming White House staff. As her first task, she handled the press arrangements for the marriage of first daughter Julie Nixon to David Eisenhower, the grandson of former president Dwight D. Eisenhower.

She worked for the first lady for a year and then left to become special assistant to the U.S. ambassador in Rome, Graham Martin.

A vivacious and popular newswoman, Ms. Donovan often took part in annual press club spoofs of elected officials. She might have been miscast in the role of press secretary, the New York Times concluded when she was replaced.

She had been a supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Hubert H. Humphrey before Nixon's election as president, and she was chosen by White House staff, not the first lady, for the press secretary's job. The Washington Post said reporters had complained that Ms. Donovan was late with press releases, played favorites with journalists and was chronically unavailable on deadline.

After her time in Rome, she returned to Washington, where she began researching a book, published in 1988 as "Crowns of Thorns and Glory: Mary Todd Lincoln and Varina Howell Davis, The Two First Ladies of the Civil War."

Upon the 1982 death of former first lady Bess Truman, Ms. Donovan wrote a long appreciation that ran in The Post's Style section.

She was born Gertrude Burch on Oct. 20, 1918, in Alexandria, Minn., and attended Wayne State University in Detroit and the University of Michigan.

In 1943, she became the first female reporter in the old United Press newswire's office in Detroit. She later worked for the Securities and Exchange Commission in Philadelphia, moving with the job to Washington in 1959.

In Washington, she worked for the Pat Munroe news agency. She later joined the Washington bureaus of the New York Daily News and Newhouse News Service. In 1967, she became president of the Women's National Press Club.

Her first husband of 17 years, Kenneth van der Heuvel, died in 1959.

Her second husband, Robert J. Donovan, former Washington bureau chief of the New York Herald Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, and author of "PT-109," died in 2003 after 25 years of marriage. A son from her first marriage, Jon van der Heuvel, died in 1982.

Survivors include two children from her first marriage, Claudia van der Heuvel of Amherst, Mass., and Heidi van der Heuvel of Ottawa, Kan.; three stepchildren, Amy Donovan, Patricia Donovan and Peter Donovan, all of Washington; and seven grandchildren.

-- Patricia Sullivan