Sad news from Mel Greenberg: Mary Garber, one of the United States' first women sportswriters, has died at the age of 92.

You can read a profile over at the Women's Sports Foundation, and I'm sure we'll get more insight from Mel, but here are some of Garber's career highlights:

Garber was a sportswriter for the Winston-Salem Journal and the Twin City Sentinel from 1946 through 1997.

She started as a society writer during World War II. When the all-male sports department was depleted because of the war she moved to sports.

She has been selected to the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame.

Most recently she entered the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame.

In 1998 she was the recipient of the WBCA's Mel Greenberg Award.

She served as president of the Football Writers Association of America and the Atlantic Coast Sports Writers Association, groups that initially denied her entry.

In 2006, the Association of Women in Sports Media named its annual award for Garber.

She was the first woman to win the Red Smith Award, The Associated Press Sports Editors' highest honor (check out her acceptance video as she talks about the "risk" the Winston-Salem Journal took when they hired her).

She sounds like a woman I would have enjoyed sitting down to dinner with:

The Winston-Salem Journal reported Sunday that a minister was making the rounds at the Brookridge Retirement Village where Garber was a resident, and he asked what she had in mind for a spiritual reward in heaven.

"Football season," she said.

I bet that VaTech field goal that cost North Carolina a victory on Saturday drove her crazy....