Reisman: Where have you gone Ruby Litinsky?

Ruby Litinsky—ah yes. They don't make them like Ruby anymore.

I tracked Ruby down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

"Uh oh, I have an idea what this might be about," she said on the phone. " Does it have anything to do with hot weather?"

When I answered in the affirmative, she reacted with a choice four-letter word and laughed. We talked for more than an hour.

This is the story—the legend of the amazing Ruby Litinksy.

Back in the 1960s, she was an intrepid police reporter who worked for this newspaper when it was owned by the Macy chain and based in White Plains in a fine old building, which still stands at the corner of Church and Main. Without air conditioning, relief on hot summer days came from open windows and electric fans.

One sweltering day in July was unbearable. Sitting at her desk on the second floor, Ruby couldn't stand it. "I think it was about 90 degrees," she recalled.

She pulled out a thermometer and declared that when the mercury rose to a certain point, she would start to undress, right there in the newsroom.

Damned if that wasn't what happened. To everybody's wide-eyed amazement, the rebellious Ruby stripped down to her black underwear.

"I was very discreet about it," she said. "I took off my dress, put it on my desk, turned sideways and kept typing."

Her boss, Milt Hoffman, reacted with stern disapproval—at least officially. He told her, "Put your clothes on and go home."

She left the paper for another newspaper job in 1969, but in the ensuing years Milt would tell and re-tell "the Ruby Litinsky story" with awe, admiration and a little amusement. After the veteran newsman died on April 7 at the age of 86, I thought it was high time to locate Ruby.

It turns out there are a boatload of Ruby stories.

In March of 1965, Ruby was in her early 20s and had been working in Westchester for about a year. This was when she volunteered to participate in a two-day state conference on drinking and driving that was held at Westchester Community College.

"They plowed me with six shots of 100-proof Old Overholt whiskey, and it had no effect on me," she remembered.

A blood-alcohol test proved she was legally intoxicated, but she was able to walk a perfect straight line on a gym floor—and in high heels no less. She was perfectly fine.

This astounded the inspectors, who struggled to come up with an explanation for her endurance. Whatever the reason, it appeared that the diminutive Ruby, who was five feet tall, minus heels, could drink most 200-pound men under the table.

The story made The New York Times with the headline, "Woman Baffles Drinking Testers."

Then the wires picked it up. Ruby was almost famous, but the publicity did not sit well with her White Plains editors who knew nothing about it until they read the morning paper.

"I didn't realize a reporter was there from the Times," she explained.

Ruby nimbly navigated her way through a two-fisted, male-dominated world of cops, mobsters, grifters and newshounds. She broke through barriers—like the time in 1971 when she equalized things on the USS Constitution, "Old Ironsides."

At this point in her career, she was writing for the Peabody Times, a paper about 20 miles north of Boston. Every year, the historic ship was taken out for a short, turnaround. It was an event open to reporters, but male reporters only. There were two reasons for this: a tradition that women aboard the 174-year-old ship were bad luck and the fact that the vessel was not equipped with appropriate toilet facilities.

None of this stopped Ruby, who disguised herself as a man and snuck on board.

"I think I was walking with a bunch of Boy Scouts, or something," she remembered. "It's tough being short."

She almost had them fooled. According to one newspaper account (this too, made national news), one of the navy guys caught her walking up the gangplank.

He told her later that her walk "looked funny," adding, "From the back I could tell you were a girl."

Ruby filed a complaint.

"The next year they allowed women on," she said triumphantly. "I liberated the Constitution."

Ruby married to Bob Madden, a navy war hero and a former Dobbs Ferry police officer, who died in 2012. She took a newspaper job in Florida, but quit. She didn't like covering government.

You could write a book about Ruby's exploits. Actually, she had this idea for a novel.

"I started typing and I got up to page 126 and couldn't describe the first kissing scene. I didn't know how to do that."

She chuckled. "I never wrote kissing stories," she said. "I did armed robberies and beatings."

Email: preisman@lohud.com Twitter: @philreisman