“It’s always hard to hear your own obituary. I wrote it myself,” said Helen Thomas when she started her speech at the Newman Center last Friday.

Thomas, who worked as a white house correspondent for 47 has earned the nickname, “the first lady of the press.” And she has all the dirt on the eight presidents that she covered as her nicknames implies. She reveals at least some of her secrets in her new book, “Thanks for the Memories Mr. President.”

But before she talked about the presidents and all their quirks she first had a few stories about her entrance into journalism many years ago.

“The first time I saw my byline in the paper, my ego swelled,:” said Thomas. “No one told me that it was a man’s world.”

She made her way to Washington D.C. with a friend who as Thomas termed was on the “plump side.” Her friend ran out of money first and wired home to her brother for $200 or else she would have to sell her body.

“He wrote back: sell it by the pound,” remembered Thomas. Needless to say he also sent the money.

Thomas told this story to demonstrate how far women and other minority groups have come in terms of equality in last 50 years.

She acknowledged this while still recognizing how far they have to come to achieve real equality.

She charged the students in the audience with being the future leaders and challenged them to “not blow it.”

And she knows a lot about leaders as she has covered the last eight presidents and their times in office. She said that John F. Kennedy was the most inspired president despite his assassination early in his term. In her remarks she referred to Jackie Kennedy as the “queen to them all.”

Clinton worked for peace and balanced the budget. But she acknowledged that he tarnished the oval office with his personal indiscretions.

Jimmy Carter was the human rights president. Of Richard Nixon she said that there were always two roads to choose from and he always took the wrong one. Gerald Ford promised an end to the national nightmare.

Reagan she credits with turning the country to the right. George Bush Sr. led the Gulf War.

But the current Bush she took to task for the war in Iraq and the rising budget deficit. But the one thing that all these presidents had in common was there dislike of the press.

The first Bush said that he used to believe in the freedom of the press and now he believes in freedom from the press. And Clinton said when asked why the press runs with him that they just wanted to see him drop dead.

Thomas goes more in-depth in her book that documents the humor of each president and how they interacted with her and her questions. She is a legend even outside the White House.

When Fidel Castro was asked what was the difference in the press system in Cuba he replied, “I don’t have to answer questions from Helen Thomas.”