Nina Harwood: A Newsroom Legend

 Published in the Kerrville Daily Times on September 12, 2026

Nina Harwood celebrates her 91st birthday in the Daily Times Newsroom

When Nina Harwood entered a room you were instantly aware of her. People who knew her referred to her as a dynamo, feisty, fearless and a force of nature. A co-worker once said that she was, “tough as an old range boot and tart as a fresh picked jalapeno.”

Between 1989 and 1993, I had the honor of knowing and working with Nina when I was a young writer at The Kerrville Daily Times. She would storm the newsroom once a week, often with a leashed dog in tow (rarely it was the same dog twice). After greeting the newsroom with a colorful comment or joke that would make a seasoned sailor blush, she would approach one of the (back then) new-fangled computers and pound out her weekly column with intense determination.

I have to admit to being both in awe and a bit afraid of the woman.

Nina Harwood was born in 1906. She claimed she had been a foundling, discovered in a cardboard box behind the courthouse in Orange, Texas. She was adopted by Ernest and Georgia Holotik, who christened her Mary Agnes. Her adoptive father was intrigued by how “tee-niny” the baby was, and her nickname became Nina.

Shortly after she was adopted, the family moved to Cuero, where Nina attended Catholic school.

As a young woman, Nina attended Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, where she earned a teaching certificate. During World War II, she worked at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi.

After the war she went to Los Angeles, where she attended the University of California to further her education. During the time she lived in Los Angeles, she met many Hollywood stars. One of her jobs in Los Angeles was babysitting Liza Minelli for Judy Garland in Beverly Hills. While living in California, Nina acquired an impressive collection of signed photographs of movie stars.

Sometime in the late 1940s, Nina returned to Texas and taught in several schools throughout South Texas. She grew tired of teaching and started dreaming of being a newspaper reporter. She approached the editor of her hometown paper, the Cuero Daily Record, and asked him if he needed any kind of help — she was willing to do office work, proofreading or anything at all — she just didn’t want to teach anymore.

The editor said he would think about it and, a few days later, she received a call informing her she had a new job as a staff reporter and could start the next Monday.

“I knew about as much about reporting as baking a cake, but I was determined to make a success of it,” she once told an interviewer.

While she didn’t have a background as a reporter, Nina soon proved her worth as an investigative journalist. She and fellow reporter, Kenneth Towery, earned the Cuero Record a Pulitzer Prize in 1955 for exposing the Veterans Land Scandal.

Nina explained the scandal as, “A lot of Cuero high muckety-mucks went to the pen. It was an investigation of how veterans were being cheated out of their land. I got a lot of the key information that I passed along to Ken.”

Towery said that Nina was a “real jewel” and “quite a character” who couldn’t be beat for digging into things.

Nina was also known for being a loyal friend and forgiving to a point. She was also famous for holding a grudge. During her 15 years with the Cuero Record, she was instrumental in getting the Cuero chief of police fired for embezzling city funds. According to her obituary, the chief had made the mistake of “riling” Nina over a petty error.

In 1961, Nina married City of Cuero employee Ted Harwood and, by 1966, Ted’s health was failing and he was considering retirement. On Labor Day weekend of 1966, Ted and Nina came to Kerrville to explore as a possible place to retire.

While Ted was ready for retirement, Nina wasn’t quite ready put down her pen. During their visit to Kerrville, the Harwoods met with Bill Dozier, who was then the editor and publisher of The Kerrville Daily Times. Nina had heard through friends that there was an opening at The Times and decided to apply.

Dozier was immediately impressed with Nina and her journalistic work, and he gave her the job.  

“Nina Harwood was one of the best reporters I ever saw,” he said. “She was not a polished writer, journalistically. Her phrases and clauses, while impeccably correct, were more school teacher than journalist — not that that’s all bad. But Nina was a fine reporter in the true sense … Nina could come up with the facts on any story as quickly and as accurately as the best of many reporters I’ve worked with in two states, big city or small town.”

Dozier also noted: “Nina, in her coverage of both the bright and seamy sides of her town, encountered a number of humans she didn’t like. But she never saw a dog of any size, breed or description that she didn’t like.”

In spite of the tough exterior of a hardened newspaper reporter, Nina had a huge soft spot for animals. A day or so after she started her job at The Times, she convinced Dozier and staff photographer Lafayette Reed that the dogs facing elimination at the city pound could be helped if The Times published pictures of “the little fellers.” She said finding the impounded dogs a home would make the dogs and bunches of kids and adults happy.

Nina was one of the first advocates for the lost and stray animals in Kerrville. To this day, The Kerrville Daily Times still features photos of animals housed at the Freeman-Fritts Animal Shelter — a feature Nina started in 1966.

At The Times, she wrote on a variety of subjects, from society issues to murders. She also had a column, “Odds N Ends,” in which Nina would write about whatever was on her mind at the time. The simple, plain-spoken column became a favorite of Times’ readers. In this column she would tell a joke, offer a bit of nostalgia or make a (sometimes caustic) comment about current events.

A newsroom tribute to Nina published in the Daily Times on her 90th birthday

She also used the column to reunite owners with lost keys, valuables and, of course, pets. And woe to the residents of Kerrville who were not treating their pets properly, because Nina would call them out for their misdeeds.

In 1986, at the age of 80, Nina retired from The Times — sort of.  In spite of announcing her retirement, Nina continued to write her “Odds N Ends” column until her death at the age of 92. At the time of her death, there was speculation that she was the oldest working reporter in the state of Texas.

Shortly after her death, Nina’s family donated her collection of signed photos from Hollywood’s golden era to the Arcadia Theater. I often think about her when I see a photo of an old movie star at the Arcadia and wonder if the photo was part of her collection..