Lewine, the first woman to be a full time-White House reporter for the AP, became a journalist "in a sexist era when women wrote for the social page - almost never the front page," said Edith Lederer, AP's chief correspondent at the United Nations, in a tribute to Lewine at the National Press Club. Lewine, who was 86, died Jan. 19 after an apparent stroke.

A close friend to Lewine, Lederer remembered that Lewine covered glamorous jobs, from White House dinners to chasing Jackie Kennedy through the Greek Islands. She gained a reputation as a persistent reporter who "knew how to ask those probing questions," Lederer said.

"But 'hard news' in those days was left to men," Lederer said. "AP never treated her on an equal basis with the male White House correspondents - and that, she said, energized her to become a leader in the movement of women journalists in the 1950s, '60s and '70s."

Helen Thomas, a longtime White House correspondent for UPI and now a columnist at Hearst Newspapers, said she and Lewine fought together to get women admitted through the Gridiron Club and the National Press Club. Lewine's memorial service was held in the National Press Club ballroom, where women were once banned.

"We covered the White House as big rivals, AP and UPI," Thomas said. They were competitors by day and friends at night. "Despite our friendship, the story was the thing."

Lewine left the AP in 1977 to join the Carter administration and became deputy director of public affairs for the Transportation Department. When President Carter left office in 1981, she moved to the fledgling Cable News Network as an assignment editor and field producer.

But she hadn't forgotten her treatment in the newsroom.

In 1973, a class-action lawsuit by eight female employees, including Lewine, and the Wire Service Guild, a union local, charged discrimination by AP. A report submitted by AP to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that year said only 2.2 percent of its 1,430 professional staff and technicians were black. No blacks were among its 220 executives.

Five years later, the EEOC found "reasonable cause to believe" that AP was violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The lawsuit was settled out of court. AP agreed to provide $2 million in relief and to establish an affirmative action program to increase the number of blacks, Hispanics, and women in news, editorial and photography positions.

AP's executive editor, Kathleen Carroll, said in a statement: "We can't ignore her persistence and her insistence that the 'boys only club' needed busting up."

"Fran spent too much of her AP career in evening finery covering the softer side and the social side of the White House. And pushing every minute to change the rules until they were fair," Carroll said.

AP legal writer Linda Deutsch remembered that Lewine, who mentored young reporters through the Journalism and Women Symposium, blazed the way for women's journalism careers today.

"At the yearly JAWS gatherings in rustic resorts, Fran pitched in to mentor young women journalists and lead them through the thicket of problems they might encounter. In many ways she had made their careers possible," Deutsch said. "She rode horseback and swam with them and, amazingly, she never grew old."

She was also a member of Executive Women in Government and the Society of Professional Journalists. She was elected to the Washington Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame and to the Hunter College Hall of Fame, and was awarded the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism last October.

CNN has created an internship in Lewine's name. The family is creating a foundation to support journalism in the vein that Lewine produced. Contributions can be made to the Frances Lewine fund at http://www.wpcf.org.

Former AP associates said contributions also may be made to a scholarship fund at the Journalism and Women Symposium, 3701 Drakeshire Drive, Modesto, Calif., 95356.