Dorothy Bullitt

Dorothy Stimson Bullitt (February 5, 1892–June 27, 1989) was a radio and television pioneer who founded King Broadcasting Company, a major owner of broadcast stations in Seattle, Washington. She was the first woman in the United States to buy and manage a television station.

Birth and early life

Bullitt was born Dorothy Frances Stimson in Seattle in 1892, four years after Washington became a state, to C. D. Stimson, a lumber and real estate magnate, and his wife Harriet. Wealthy throughout her childhood and early adulthood, in 1918 she married A. Scott Bullitt, a lawyer and aspiring politician 14 years her senior. Scott Bullitt, a member of a prominent Kentucky family, became a prominent Democrat and friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was scheduled to place Roosevelt's name in nomination for the U.S. presidency at the 1932 Democratic National Convention when he died of liver cancer, leaving Dorothy a widow at the age of 40. She attended the convention as a delegate in her late husband's place, and presented a plank outlawing child labor for the party's platform.