Women’s History Month: Carol McCready Hartley
Day 12 of Women’s History Month features another Arizona food editor – Carol McCready Hartley.
Hartley graduated from Iowa State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in home economics, focusing on textiles. She was a member of Pi Beta Phi sorority. Her first job was in Chicago, at Carson Pirie Scott, the city’s second largest department store, as a member of the Fashion Board, staging style shows throughout Chicago and North Shore suburbs.
She married Richard H. Voshall in 1955. The couple divorced in 1961. She moved from Chicago to Phoenix, Arizona in 1961, and went to work for Phoenix Newspapers, Inc., the following year. She became the first food editor of the afternoon paper, The Phoenix Gazette. Eventually the Food Section was among the largest in the country, up to 50 pages. At that time Phoenix was popular with food manufacturers as a test product city because it was relatively isolated population-wise.
Hartley won numerous Arizona Press Women awards, also National Press Women awards. She was Arizona judge of Fleischmann Yeast awards to deserving high school girls, Arizona judge for Junior Miss contest. In 1967 she was one of 25 national food editors in Redbook magazine.
Numerous years she won the top Vesta award for excellence in food writing from the American Meat Institute.
In 1969 she was one of nine judges at the Pillsbury Bake-Off, her team of three drawing the new Refrigerated Division, and selecting the top winner. It involved rolling a marshmallow in melted butter, cinnamon and sugar, covering with a rolled Pillsbury Crescent roll, and baking it for an instant cinnamon bun. It was the start of “Pigs in Blankets”, etc. using supermarket refrigerated dough.
She received “outstanding contribution”award in 1970 from Arizona Dietetic Association. The next year she was one of eight food editors invited to tour West Germany by the German Marketing Board for Agriculture. Also in 1971 she was one of ten food editors to tour Spain, hosted by the Spanish Green Olive Growers Co-Operative. In 1973 she was a guest of the Danish Consulate and Denmark Cheese Association, touring Danish food production. Also that year she hosted Tour of Netherlands and Germany, hosted by Lufthansa and American Express, open to Phoenix residents.
Hartley was a charter member of Arizona Home Economists in Business, also charter member of the Association of Food Journalists. In 1974 she was one of three national judges of Junior Miss Kraft Menu Contest. That year she was a judge at the National Pineapple Cooking Contest held in Honolulu at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
A favorite story about Hartley was repeated in her obituary: “Her mother was one of the four bridge playing Omaha friends whom Warren Buffett approached for a small seed money investment in his dream of a company, and she said no, as she thought he was too young at the time.”
