Photograph of Claire Shipman, First Lady Laura Bush, President George W. Bush and Jill Ensminger

Pictured here, from left to right, are Claire Shipman, First Lady Laura Bush, President George W. Bush and Jill Ensminger.

Claire Shipman is a graduate of Worthington High School and is a journalist, author and public speaker. Shipman has had an illustrious career in broadcast journalism. For fourteen years she served as a regular contributor to “Good Morning America” and other national broadcasts for ABC News. She also served as White House correspondent for NBC News, and worked for CNN for a decade, covering the White House as well as spending five years in Moscow. Her coverage of the fall of the Soviet Union helped earn CNN a Peabody Award, and she received a DuPont Award and an Emmy Award for coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square student uprising. Shipman earned her master's degree from Columbia University and is a member of its board of trustees.

Jill Ensminger was for many years a Worthington resident and was the longtime partner of Claire Shipman’s father, Morgan Enlow Shipman (b. 1933 d. 2008). Morgan Shipman was a Worthington resident for 40 years and was a legendary law professor at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He taught there for 39 years, and was an unprecedented five-time recipient of the school’s “Outstanding Professor of the Year” award. In 2004, the award was renamed the “Morgan E. Shipman Outstanding Professor Award” in his honor.

Shipman and Ensminger were visiting the White House during the holiday season. George W. Bush was in the final year of his two terms as 43rd President of the United States.