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Top Food Editors: Day Nine & Nell Snead

July 9, 2013, 5:05 pm
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After earning a college degree and teaching English in Nebraska, Nell Snead applied for a job at the Kansas City Star while in the city on vacation in the 1930s. She started on the city desk but soon took on the job of women’s page editor after being promised that she could go to New York City to learn about fashion.

She also covered food and her recipes are included in the 1952 Coast to Coast cookbook. There were four women on the staff when she was hired and she encouraged the hiring of more women. She trained 16 of them who became known as “Nell’s chicks.”

She survived a 1957 plane crash in France - she regretted not being able to complete the French meal that was being served on the flight. According to the executive editor of the newspaper: “No label fits Nell Snead. She is a free spirit, and you will never know another like her.” She worked for the women’s pages for more than four decades.
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Top Food Editors: Day Ten & Phyllis Tamor

July 10, 2013, 10:31 am
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Day 10 of top newspaper food editors features Phyllis Tamor of the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Phyllis Tamor was a home economics graduate of Pennsylvania State University. She worked as a home economist for a Chicago meat company in the 1950s. It involved a great deal of travel and a daily taste testing of steak when she was in town. She sometimes made presentations under the name of “Martha Logan.”

She went on to become the food editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer. She judged several cooking contest, including a 1964 meat roasting contest that was also covered by a Sports Illustrated reporter. She did graduate work in nutrition.

She left the journalism field in the 1960s and went into public relations when she developed multiple sclerosis at age 46. This caused her to write a cookbook for those cooking from a wheelchair. It also led to the publication of several of her recipes in newspapers in the 1980s.
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Top Food Editors: Day 11 & Dorothy Crandall

July 11, 2013, 11:00 am
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Day 11 of Top Food Editors features Dorothy Crandall of the Boston Globe.

Dorothy Crandall was the Boston Globe’s food editor from 1953 to 1973. She was the editor for Julia Child’s recipe column in the Globe.

In 1959, Crandall covered the first meeting of the Boston chapter of Les Dames des Amis d'Escoffier and remained a member until her death. She earned a home economics degree from University of Vermont. While writing food features for the Sunday Globe, she took classes at Boston University in food photography and journalism.

She earned a master's degree in education from the University of Vermont in 1952. She did food and marketing commentaries for the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Boston radio stations for five years prior joining the Globe.

She was known for a recipe in which a roast is cooked under the hood of a car.
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Top Food Editors: Day 12 and Kay Savage

July 12, 2013, 4:50 am
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Day 12 of Top Food Editors is Kay Savage of the Detroit Free Press.

Kay Savage was the food editor at the Detroit Free Press – from 1945 through the 1960s. She wrote several cookbooks and answered readers’ questions through her column “Tower Kitchen Recipe Box” for years.

She had a test kitchen and one assistant - home economist Cecil Fleming. Kay was named to the Detroit reporters’ Hall of Fame. In 1955, she married Howard Kennedy.
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Top Food Editors: Day 13 and Dorothy Neighbors (Marion Ferriss Guinn)

July 13, 2013, 7:15 am
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Day 13 of top newspaper food editors feature Marion Guinn who used the pen name "Dorothy Neighbors" of the Seattle Times.

Marion Ferriss Guinn graduated from the University of Washington in 1929 with degrees in home economics and journalism. She was the hired by the Seattle Times as a reporter. Soon she was named the new Dorothy Neighbors, writing columns and dispensing food advice.

During World War II, when events were held in Victory Square, Guinn presented a number of "Housewives Go to War" programs advising women of ways to help the war effort.

Her recipes were included in the 1952 Coast to Coast cookbook.
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Top Food Editors: Day 14 and Rosa Tusa

July 14, 2013, 7:25 am
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Day 14 of Top Food editor highlights Rosa Tusa - from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Palm Beach, Florida.

Rosa Tulsa learned to cook from her Italian father and was hired by the Milwaukee Sentinel’s women’s pages in 1953. She became the Sentinel food editor in 1962. She married painter Kyril Vassilev after meeting when Tusa interviewed him for a story. The couple lived in a castle and raised Great Danes. She was a good friend of Poppy Cannon and judged the 1970 Pillsbury Bake-Off.

In 1971, she and her husband moved to Florida and she became the food editor of the Palm Beach Post. During her career, she attempted to cook a mouse nose and fought a bull in Spain.

She retired in 1987. She wrote a cookbook about grits.
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Top Food Editors: Day 15 and Grace Hartley

July 15, 2013, 11:16 am
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Day 15 of Top Food Editors features Grace Hartley from Atlanta.

Grace Hartley had a home economics degree from the Georgia College for Women in Milledgeville – now Georgia College. Her first job was with a social service agency where, in the depth of the Depression, she taught social workers how to plan meals for families and instructed people in food preparation. She was the food editor at the Atlanta Constitution for more than four decades, 1936 to 1970 and wrote for the newspaper’s weekly magazine for another decade.

She worked for the War Production Board during World War II. She wrote a well-respected cookbook about Southern food. She had one of the first electric ranges in Atlanta, and likely the first microwave, a massive piece of equipment that stood 5 feet tall, with a conventional oven underneath. She was married for 33 years to Judson G. Germon.
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Top Food Editors: Day 16 & Ruth Gray

July 16, 2013, 10:44 am
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Day 16 of Top Food Editors features Ruth Gray.

Ruth Gray became the food editor in 1963 of the St. Petersburg Times and began reviewing restaurants in 1974. One restaurant that earned a negative review named their crab sandwich in her honor. She earned a bachelor’s degree in home economics from Kansas State University.

She married and raised a daughter. When she was investigating a restaurant, Gray wore hats and scarves and ducked inside the ladies room to take notes and remain inconspicuous. The disguises were needed because some restaurants posted her photo on the wall in the kitchen—a common practice because restaurant owners looked to identify critics.
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Top Food Editors: Day 17 & Josephine Gibson

July 17, 2013, 12:58 pm
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For Day 17, features Josephine Gibson of the Pittsburgh Press.

According to the newspaper's photo archive:
This photo was taken at Pittsburgh’s Hilton Hotel in 1961, the year that Josephine Gibson retired after a 24-year career as food editor of The Pittsburgh Press.

Gibson had earned a degree in home economics from Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1924. In 1927, she founded and directed the home economics department at the H.J. Heinz Company.

At a model kitchen arranged on a stage in the Heinz plant auditorium, she lectured while demonstrating how to cook specific dishes. She developed and tested recipes using Heinz products and gave demonstrations to more than 80,000 people a year who toured the company’s plant. She also had a radio show, “Hostess Talk to Women,” aired three times a week on the NBC network.

After joining the Press in 1937, she answered thousands of letters in a column called Recipe Exchange. Typical of the time, Press reporter Maxine Garrison interviewed Gibson and the story’s headline read, “Press Writer Mixes Career With Marriage Successfully.”

The two women talked over lunch at Gibson’s home, where she served creamed mushrooms with bacon, fresh vegetable salad with stuffed celery, hot rolls and strawberry shortcake.

She outlined her philosophy this way: “Most housewives, and the families they cook for, aren’t epicures, and don’t want to be. They want honest-to-goodness food, and for the most part, they ask merely a new approach.”

Gibson tested many of her recipes at home in the evening while her husband, Attorney William H. Eckert. The couple had two daughters.
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Top Food Editors: Day 18 & Clarice Rowlands

July 18, 2013, 1:25 pm
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Day 18 of Top Food Editors features Clarice Rowlands.

Clarice Rowlands was the food editor of the Milwaukee Journal in the 1950s – an interest that she said started when she was a member of the 4-H Club in high school. A 1936 graduate of the University of Wisconsin, she was a society reporter at a Green Bay newspaper from 1937 until 1943 and then joined the Journal.

She occasionally wrote under the pen name Alice Richards. She was married to fellow Journal employee Charles Nevada. She said she was often asked the question that tends to irritate many food writers: “Does she cook?” Many of these women found that the question undermined their roles as journalists. Rowlands’ response to the question was: “No, I am a reporter in the field and it is not more necessary for me to prepare all the food I write about than it is for the paper’s crime reporter to commit the crimes about which he writes.”

She died of a heart attack in 1968.
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Top Food Editors: Day 19 & Mary Acton Hammond (Frances Blackwood)

July 19, 2013, 8:02 am
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Day 19 of Top Food Editors features Mary Acton Hammond who used the pen name "Frances Blackwood" for the Philadelphia Bulletin.

Mary Acton Hammond was hired as the newspaper’s first food editor in 1929. She worked out of her own kitchen where she tested her recipes – for 53 years.

In 1941, she traveled to England interviewing British women about how they prepared food during the war. It led to a series of columns which First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt mentioned in her “My Day” column.

In looking to normalize and understand the women of war-torn Britain, Philadelphia Bulletin food editor Mary Acton Hammond, who used the pen name “Francis Blackwood,” traveled to the United Kingdom. It all began with a February 7, 1942 letter she wrote to the newspaper’s managing editor. She wrote:
There is, I believe, a deep need in this country for a clearer understanding of what the war is doing to the homes of England. We do read and see pictures of women in war industries in England, but the most these seems to inspire is a wish to wear uniforms that look snappy. There has been nothing to give us a hint of the homes those girls left in the morning and will return to at night, or what those uniforms are costing in home-life.

Her editor agreed and booked her a seat on a Pan-Am flight for England. She would stay for six weeks and interview the women about their home lives and the foods they prepared. She described the rationing system and the lack of food delivery trucks due to gasoline shortages. She told the stories of women who worked 10-hour shifts in factories while cooking her brother and father meals. Each day she sent back a story for her newspaper. In sampling, she wrote about lack of fruit, the difficulty of matching ration books to local stores and swapping practice to trade foods.

The columns were eventually published in the book, Mrs. England Goes on Living.

Her reporting on these women reminded me of the introduction of the great book: Grandma's Wartime Kitchen by Joanne Lamb Hayes.

She retired as food editor in 1982.
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Top Food Editors: Day 20 & Julie Duvac Bowes

July 20, 2013, 12:34 pm
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Day 20 of Top Food Editors features Julie Duvac Bowes of New Orleans.

She began her career of 30 years as the Food Editor of the Times-Picayune in 1949 under the pen name of Sue Baker. She tested on her family the recipes that she used in her twice-weekly column, published on Thursdays and in color on Sundays in the Dixie Roto Magazine. She graduated from Louisiana State University with a degree in home economics in 1942. She married during World War II, and her husband later became a judge. She raised five children and was an accomplished golfer.
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Top Food Editors" Day 21 & Dorothy Sinz

July 21, 2013, 7:07 am
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Day 21 of Top Food Editors features Dorothy Sinz.

Dorothy Sinz was the food editor of the Dallas Times Herald from the 1940s through 1969. She died the following year. She was a judge in the Miss America pageant in 1964 and 1966. She was also a judge in the Pillsbury Bake-Off.

She graduated from Southern Methodist University in Dallas in 1931. She wrote a recipe book for the newspaper in 1964. Her obituary noted her request that her age not be listed.
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Top Food Editors: Day 22 & Clementine Paddleford

July 22, 2013, 1:08 pm
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Day 22 of Top Food Editors features Clementine Paddleford.

Clementine Paddleford earned a journalism degree from Kansas State University in 1921 and had a good deal of food trade and magazine experience before she began writing for the New York Herald Tribune and This Week magazine beginning in the 1920s until the newspaper went under in 1966.

In 1932, doctors removed a malignant growth from her larynx and vocal cords, which left her with a husky voice. For the rest of her life, she breathed through a tube in her throat, concealed by a black ribbon. She had a popular recipe feature, “How America Eats,” that was turned into a 1960 cookbook. She was briefly married and later raised the daughter of a friend who had died.

Her papers are at Kansas State University.

She has been described as a Nellie Bly of culinary journalism.
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Top Food Editors: Day 23 & Jeanne Voltz

July 23, 2013, 11:20 am
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Day 23 of Top Food Editors features Jeanne Voltz.

Jeanne Voltz earned a journalism degree from what is now the University of Montevallo. She worked the news beat during World War II and got married to a fellow journalist. She then became the food editor at the Miami Herald in the 1950s and at the Los Angeles Times in the 1960s through the early 1970s.

She later became the food editor at Woman’s Day magazine. She wrote many cookbooks and was considered an expert on BBQ and Southern cooking. She was married for most of her career and raised two children. She published many cookbooks - several of which are shown above.

In her more than forty years as a food journalist, Voltz became what one culinary authority described as “the best known food expert you’ve probably never heard of.”

Here is a link to my article about her from American Journalism.
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Top Food Editors: Day 24 & Ann Criswell

July 24, 2013, 11:22 am
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Day 24 of Top Food Editors features Ann Criswell.

Ann Criswell was the longtime food editor of the Houston Chronicle – from 1966 to 2000. She started the column “Looking for Cooking” her first year. She described it as a “backyard type of discussion about cooking.”

She reviewed restaurants, wrote several cookbooks, and judged the Pillsbury Bake-Off. During her tenure she sampled chocolate-covered ants, fried parsley, raw tuna, quail eggs, black rice, rattlesnake, armadillo, and everything that “tastes like chicken.” She raised two children.
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Top Food Editors: Day 25 & Julie Benell

July 25, 2013, 11:37 am
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Day 25 of Top Food Editors features Julie Benell.

Julie Benell, a reporter and editor on food who worked 25 years at the Dallas Morning News. Benell, a native of San Antonio, was a former concert pianist who switched to the stage and later to performances on radio and television. She was the author of several cookbooks, including the popular Let’s Eat at Home.

She had a daily television show about food and fashion for 15 years while she was at the newspaper. It was her show that was interrupted when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. She judged the 1962 great national Cookout Championship for Men Only in Hawaii, along with Clementine Paddleford.

Bebell wrote several cookbooks.

She donated her cookbook collection to Texas Woman’s University.
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Top Food Editors: Day 26 & Polly Paffilas

July 26, 2013, 11:41 am
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Day 26 of Top Food Editors features Polly Paffilas, the longtime food editor at the Akron Beacon Journal.

According to her obituary:
""Polly was one of the grand dames of journalism,' said her former longtime colleague Mickey Porter. "She'd tackle any kind of story."
Her newspaper career covered more than 45 years before she retired in 1987.

She and colleague Frances B. Murphey, who died in 1998, broke into the business as temporary hires through Manpower. When the staff was short in the newsroom during World War II, they were called in.

It was a male-dominated business when Miss Paffilas signed on in 1942, in the low-tech days of pencils, typewriters and hot metal type.

Hired at $23.50 a week as a clerk in the reference library, she tried to learn every job at the paper. She even learned how to operate the manual elevator.

Miss Paffilas became a cub reporter on the city desk. She later moved to the Woman's Department, where she became food writer, women's editor, and spent 10 years as the About Town columnist."

This is how Polly described her position: "The newspaper food editor is the homemaker's best friend, mother confessor and mentor. Mrs. Jones calls us when she can't understand a recipe in a national magazine or when Graham Kerr talks about clarified butter. Mrs. Jones doesn't call the magazine or the TV station. She calls me."

Her recipe collection was donated to the Akron Public Library. Here is a link to the finding guide.
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Top Food Editors: Day 27 & Eleanor Ostman

July 27, 2013, 11:50 am
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Day 27 of Top Food Editors features Eleanor Ostman.

She graduated from Macalester College’s journalism program and wrote about home furnishings before covering food at the St. Paul Pioneer-Press. At the time, she was a young wife without much cooking experience. She wrote about her family’s love of a dish or a disaster that she had in the kitchen. She initiated a recipe column “This Sunday” that ran for more than 25 years.

She is known for having lunch with Paul Newman after winning his recipe contest. She was often confused with her counterpart at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who had a similar name. She was married to Ron Aune and they raised a son.

She wrote several cookbooks based on her column - a mix of food & wit.
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Top Food Editors: Day 28 & Grace Barr

July 28, 2013, 11:57 am
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Day 28 of Top Food Editors features Orlando Sentinel food editor Grace Warlow Barr.

I attended Goucher College in Baltimore before marrying Leal Barr. The couple had twins: Gracia and Graham. They divorced in 1936 and she joined the Sentinel in 1940 to support her family. She initially became the society editor with a column called "Cynthia's Tea Table Chatter." The column ended in 1964 and she focused on food. She was the food editor until her retirement in 1969. Her cookbook, Cooking with Grace, was published in 1970.

She was known for her recipes that began with “start with a stick of butter.”

She had an active social life but never remarried. Yet, she often told her children: "Your Father was enough. I'll never make that mistake again." That was according to her son's memoir.

Barr was good friends with Women's Page Editor Dorothy Chapman who took over as food editor when Barr retired. I will write about Chapman in my next post.
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