Betty Klaric was one of the first women to enter the predominantly all-male field of investigative environmental reporting. A graduate of Ohio State University, she joined the staff of the Cleveland Press as a ‘copy boy’ in 1955. By the early 1960s, she was a full-fledged reporter focusing on the environment. Her nationally-reported coverage of a fire that erupted on the Cuyahoga River in 1969 is generally credited with alerting the nation to the environmental dangers of chemical waste products polluting the air and water. When the Press closed in 1982, she reinvented herself as a lawyer working for the State Employment Relations Board and as a trial lawyer in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of the Solicitor. The Audubon Society, the EPA, Governor Rhodes, and President Richard Nixon commended her contributions. She was elected to the Press Club Hall of Fame and was the first female president of the Cleveland Newspaper Guild.