Barbara Andry Boyd

Name: Barbara Andry Boyd (Andry)
Birth Date: 1929
Birth Place: Evanston, IL

Summary

Barbara Boyd high School yearbook photo 1947

Barbara Boyd taught women about their bodies, and about the steps they could take to protect themselves from harm. Boyd was a TV reporter and a news anchor, and her foray into women’s health was largely unplanned. But, if anything, that made her impact even more profound.

Barbara Andry was born in Evanston in 1929. (1)  As a teenager, she joined the Evanston Y.W.C.A.’s “Girl Reserve,” and in the summers, she worked in the Evanston offices of Illinois Bell Telephone. (2)  She graduated from ETHS in 1947 and set off for college at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. (3)  Afterwards, she moved back to Evanston and fell in love with Ted Boyd, who’d also recently moved to Evanston to take a job at the Emerson Street Branch Y.M.C.A. (4) They got married and started a family, and after a few years, Ted became director of the Y. (5) Then, in 1961, they moved together to Indianapolis. (6)

As Boyd later told a series of interviewers, even as a young child, she had dreamed of performing and entertaining a crowd. (7)  But it took her several decades to become a public figure. After taking on a series of administrative positions, she joined Indianapolis’ WRTV (then WFBM-TV) in 1969, when she was already 40 years old. (8) She was initially hired as a general assignment reporter, but quickly became the city’s “definitive” consumer affairs reporter, and eventually became one of its daytime news anchors. (9) She was the first Black woman in Indiana television history to hold each and every one of these roles. (10) As her mother later relayed to the Evanston Review, Barbara was “accustomed to ‘being first.’” (11)

In her 25 years on the air, Boyd broke an untold number of big stories. But without question, the single most important segment of her career was taped in 1973—and not from the comfort of the WRTV studio, or even from an Indianapolis street corner, but from her very own hospital bed. (12)

As Boyd later explained, she had already started researching “Reach to Recovery,” a mastectomy support group, when she found a lump in her breast. She was upset, of course, as anyone would be, but she also recognized “a great story.” (13) To her own surprise, as much as to anyone else’s, she pitched a piece on the importance of self-exams, the ins-and-outs of breast cancer diagnoses and procedures, and the resources available to other Hoosiers who might soon find themselves in the same position. (14) The WRTV crew filmed the aftermath of her mastectomy and produced a seven-minute segment. It was much longer than a typical feature, and an immediate sensation. (15)

In the ensuing weeks and months, Boyd became something of a sensation herself. Decades later, she recalled how she’d traveled “around the country—doing stories on talk shows, answering questions on breast cancer.” This was the mid-1970s, a time—as Boyd herself admitted—when speaking publicly “about something as personal as breasts…was quite a courageous, brave thing to do.’” (16) For her gumption and for her openness, as well as for her fundraising efforts on behalf of cancer research, Boyd received a CASPER Award from the Community Service Council of Indianapolis and was named “Woman of the Year” by her local chapter of the American Cancer Society. (17) She was widely credited, too, with helping to bring down the number of breast cancer deaths in Indiana. (18)

Barbara Boyd is a bona fide “living legend,” a member of both the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame and the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame, and a great-grandmother more than a dozen times over. (19) Among all her accomplishments, her most famous TV broadcast still looms large. In 2019, when Indiana Representative André Carson introduced a tribute to Boyd into the Congressional Record, he singled out her “strong advoca[cy] in the fight against breast cancer” and her “brave decision to share her personal journey,” which had made all the difference. (20)

 

  1. “Barbara Boyd,” The History Makers: The Digital Repository for the Black Experience, July 11, 2000, accessed March 5, 2025, https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/barbara-boyd-40.
  2. “Y.W.C.A. Review of Week,” Evanston Review, September 7, 1944, 18; “Boyd named TV news co-anchor,” Evanston Review, January 26, 1984, 100.
  3.  “Name Graduates,” Evanston Newsette, June 26, 1947, 1; “Barbara Boyd,” Indiana Broadcast History Archive, February 2024, accessed March 5, 2025, https://ibha.indiana.edu/person/boyd-barbara-1929/.
  4. “Emerson ‘Y’ to Have Reception Sunday for Boys’ Work Director,” Evanston Review, November 1, 1951, 26; “Barbara Andry Will Wed Theodore Boyd,” Evanston Review, April 9, 1953, 54. 
  5. Barbara Andry Will Wed Theodore Boyd,” Evanston Review, April 9, 1953, 54 ; “‘Y’ Director Teaches Tots to Swim,” Evanston Review, March 23, 1961, 46.
  6. “Barbara Boyd,” Indiana Broadcast History Archive.
  7. “Barbara Boyd,” Indiana Broadcast History Archive; “Barbara Boyd,” Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame, 2000, accessed March 5, 2025, https://www.ijhf.org/members/2000/barbara-boyd.
  8.  “Feature Reporter,” Evanston Review, September 18, 1969, 82;;“Barbara Boyd,” Indiana Broadcast History Archive.
  9.  “Barbara Boyd,” Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame; “Barbara Boyd,” Indiana Broadcast History Archive.
  10.  “Barbara Boyd,” Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame.
  11. “Boyd named TV news co-anchor,” Evanston Review, January 26, 1984, 100.
  12.  “Barbara Boyd finds a lump in her breast,” session 1, tape 3, story 4, Barbara Boyd (A2000.006), interviewed by Julieanna Richardson, July 11, 2000, The History Markers Digital Archive; “Barbara Boyd’s breast cancer inspires a new story and other appearances,” session 1, tape 4, story 5, Barbara Boyd (A2000.006), interviewed by Julieanna Richardson, July 11, 2000, The History Markers Digital Archive. 
  13.  “Barbara Boyd’s breast cancer inspires a new story and other appearances.”
  14. “Barbara Boyd,” The History Makers.
  15. “Barbara Boyd’s breast cancer inspires a new story and other appearances.”
  16.  “Barbara Boyd’s breast cancer inspires a new story and other appearances.”
  17. “Barbara Boyd honored for cancer fund work,” Evanston Review, January 30, 1975, 49; “Barbara Boyd,” Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame; “Barbara Boyd,” The History Makers.
  18.  “Barbara Boyd,” The History Makers.
  19. “RECOGNIZING BARBARA BOYD’S SERVICE TO OUR COMMUNITY ON HER 90TH BIRTHDAY,” Congressional Record, May 1, 2019, https://www.congress.gov/116/crec/2019/05/01/CREC-2019-05-01-pt1-PgE521.pdf; “Barbara Boyd,” Indiana Broadcast History Archive.
  20. “RECOGNIZING BARBARA BOYD’S SERVICE TO OUR COMMUNITY ON HER 90TH BIRTHDAY.”
Education: Evanston Township High School, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Years in Evanston: 1929-1961