Mary Thom: Prominent journalist and feminist dies in motorcycle accident

Prominent journalist and feminist Mary Thom, a former editor of Ms. Magazine, was killed in a motorcycle accident in Yonkers on Friday. She was 68.

The Women's Media Center, where Thom was editor-in-chief, announced her death.

She had taken her 1996 Honda Magna 750 out of winter storage when she veered into traffic while entering a Yonkers highway, striking a vehicle and then being struck by another.

Thom helped found the influential feminist publication Ms. Magazine, where she started as an editor in 1972 and became executive editor in 1990, leaving two years later to lead the Women's Media Center, which helps raise women's visibility in the media.

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"Mary was and will always be our moral compass and steady heart," said the center's co-founders Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda in a statement. "Wherever her friends and colleagues gather, we will always ask the guiding question: What would Mary do?"

Thom, described as a fierce advocate who fought for equal pay for women in the US, was known as a journalistic prodigy who helped shape the careers of many writers from the feminist movement, including Gloria Steinem.

"She was a lodestone for the women's movement nationally, and a center of trust, common sense and creativity," Steinem said on Saturday.