Here's the Reuters story on Helen Thomas' resignation on May 16, 2000, from UPI:
---
Sam Donaldson: "The White House will probably survive. But UPI cannot. Helen is and was UPI."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Helen Thomas, the dean of the White House press corps and a thorn in the side of eight presidents, announced her resignation from UPI on Tuesday.
Her announcement came the day after United Press International was purchased by News World Communications Inc., which owns the Washington Times newspaper and is linked to the Unification Church.
"I do not intend to stay," the 79-year-old Thomas said in a statement.
"United Press International is a great news agency. It has made a remarkable mark in the annals of American journalism and has left a superb legacy for future journalists. I wish the new owners all the best, great stories and happy landings," she said.
Her statement did not say she was upset by the sale but it was clear she was unhappy with the latest incarnation of the financially ailing wire service, which has lurched from crisis to crisis over the past 20 years.
News World Communications said it planned to continue to operate the news service as an independent news organization.
Thomas has been a fixture at the White House since the early 1960s when she came to cover Kennedy and his highly popular wife Jacqueline. Thomas is particularly known for her no-nonsense questions at presidential news conferences.
Her seat in the front row of the White House press briefing room was empty on Tuesday as White House spokesman Joe Lockhart conducted the daily briefing.
"Speaking for myself, this room will not be the same without Helen sitting in the UPI chair," Lockhart said. "I know she's been there for longer than I've been alive and knows more than I'll ever know about this business, about this building, about this town."
"Speaking for the entire White House we will miss her and we certainly hope that she'll find a way in all the new ventures that she'll be pursuing to have business here and come here and cross-question me and bug me like she's done since the day I took this job," Lockhart said.
Thomas began her White House career at a time when women had a limited role in journalism. She was 40 years old and staking out the Georgetown home of the Kennedys just after he had won the election in November 1960.
"At least once a day the president-elect would come out on the doorstep and announce to the press the appointment of a new member of his cabinet. It was the closest I got to 'hard news' for a while,'' she said in her 1999 memoirs, Front Row at the White House.
She covered Kennedy and every president since then, posing the tough questions that some reporters shied away from asking.
During the Richard Nixon presidency she gained fame with stories based on phone calls from Martha Mitchell, wife of then-Attorney General John Mitchell. Mrs. Mitchell called her to express her outrage about the Watergate break-in only days after it happened.
"She was a dogged, dedicated worker," said ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson, who toiled with Thomas at the White House for years. "The White House will probably survive. But UPI cannot. Helen is and was UPI."
He remembered the time on the White House South Lawn when Jimmy Carter was planting a cedar tree from Helen's ancestral home, Lebanon, and after he left her colleagues urged her to shovel some dirt around the sapling.
"She finally picked up a shovel and shoveled in some dirt," said Donaldson. "At that moment, I heard the voices of presidents past, present and future whisper, 'Shove her in, shove her in.'"
Larry McQuillan, who covers the White House for USA Today and once worked for Thomas on UPI's White House team, said even though she was demanding of presidents they never disliked her once they had left.
"For years I've watched presidents squirm under her questioning, and then after they've left the White House and you run into them at some event, they all think fondly of her, and it's because while she was tough, she was fair," McQuillan said.
One day McQuillan walked outside the White House gates for lunch with Thomas. A panhandler came up and asked for money. Thomas pulled out her wallet, looked at the man, said, "Wait a minute,'' and ran down the sidewalk and into a store.
"Crazy woman," the panhandler said, and walked away.
A few seconds later Helen came running out of the store, waving some money, chased him down and gave him somemoney.
"All I had was a $20," she told McQuillan. "I've got to eat too."