Carole Ashkinaze was raised in Malverne, New York on Long Island. It was said she wanted to be a journalist from the time she was in grade school and worked on a camp newsletter. Like many Long Islanders, she went to college in upstate New York. During her years at St. Lawrence University she became a member of Pi Beta Phi. She was one of the chapter’s first Jewish members.*
After graduation in 1966, she entered the Columbia University School of Journalism for a Master’s degree. While working for the Long Island newspaper Newsday, she shared in a 1970 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of political corruption on Long Island.
From 1976 until 1989, she worked for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. She was the first woman to serve on the newspaper’s editorial board. The Editor’s column in the Fall 1985 Arrow of Pi Beta Phi had this shout out:
Congratulations to one of our own Atlanta Alumnae Club members, Carole Ashkinaze, New York Gamma, an editorial associate with the Atlanta Constitution. Carole took second place for the Best Personal Column-Serious Subject in the 1984 Georgia Press Association’s annual awards.
An article in the Spring 1987 Arrow reported that she was presented with a St. Lawrence Alumni Citation. Ashkinaze visited the chapter house:
She still sings those Pi Phi songs with enthusiasm. She spoke of the football games in the snow with the SAEs and of other traditions that have changed through the years. She toured through the house, speaking of memories and people far removed from the present…She hadn’t been to New York Gamma in twenty years and enjoyed talking to the sisters, teaching them some songs they didn’t know and even digging up her old history. She spoke fondly of her years at SLU and with warmth of her Pi Phi memories.
Her professional life was devoted to civil liberties and the causes of women. Devoted to making the world a better place, she championed the Equal Rights Amendment.
She coauthored several books, one with President Jimmy Carter, with whom she closely worked on several projects. She served on the Chicago Sun-Times’ editorial board. The last part of her professional career was spent in New York and Washington as an author and media strategist. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, she served as a a consultant to the American Civil Liberties Union
Her newspaper columns are in the Women’s History Archives at Georgia State University. She received the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood and the “EMMA” (Exceptional Merit Media Award) from the National Women’s Political Caucus.
Ashkinaze married widower Irving Kay when she was 63 years old. The couple settled in Atlanta. She died at the age of 71 in 2016.
*She took part in an oral history about being Jewish at St. Lawrence in the 1960s and that’s where the reference to her religion was found.
