Bascom Timmons, 97; Ran Washington News Service

Bascom Timmons, for seven decades a Washington correspondent for dozens of newspapers, an adviser to Presidents beginning with Calvin Coolidge and a political observer who once became so disenchanted with the process that he tried to become vice president, is dead at the age of 97.

Timmons died at his home in the nation’s capital on Sunday.

Sarah McClendon, who joined Timmons’ staff in 1944 and now runs her own news service, said he was responsible for the influx of women into the Capitol press corps.

“When men went off to war, he started taking many women in,” McClendon said. “That’s why so many got a chance in Washington.”

Timmons began his journalism career in 1906 in his native Texas and in the 1920s created a Washington bureau to serve newspapers in Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi, Kansas, Alabama, Louisiana and Ohio.

Presidents including Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt sought his advice. He used Roosevelt’s influence to save the National Press Club in 1932, when its building was on the verge of foreclosure during the Great Depression.

But by 1940, Timmons had become disenchanted with the idea of a third term for Roosevelt and angry that his friend, Vice President John Nance Garner, would not be on the ticket.

Timmons decided, somewhat as a joke, to run for vice president. Politicians and journalistic peers paraded at the Democratic Convention in his honor, but the nomination went to Henry A. Wallace.

Timmons was always concerned with the plight of abandoned animals. On one occasion, he gave a home to a canary belonging to Grace Coolidge, the President’s wife. The bird somehow got along well with all of Timmons’ cats. A cat cemetery in Washington has 125 of Timmons’ cats.

Timmons was the author of three books: “Garner Texas,” “Portrait of an American: A Biography of Charles Gates Dawes” and “Jesse H. Jones: The Man and the Statesman.” Jones was a New Deal executive under Roosevelt; Dawes, vice president under Coolidge.

Timmons retired in 1976 at the age of 86.