Women’s History Month: Dorothee Polson
Day 11 of Women’s History Month features Arizona Republic food editor Dorothee Polson. She was a Vesta Award winner for top newspaper food writing and knew Arizona women’s page editor Maggie Savoy who I blogged about earlier this month. I came across an oral history with Dorothee. It is available here.
In the history, Dorothee mentions Maggie and her experiences as a food journalist. Here is one of my favorite parts as she described coming to Phoenix in 1962:
“I think it helped me that there had not been a food section, because there were no rules and regulations to follow. I could just do whatever I wanted to. And I did. I would do interviews with interesting people that had nothing to do with food and just bring in their favorite recipes, because everyone eats. Most people cook a little bit, and most people have a favorite recipe, whether it’s theirs or somebody else’s. No matter what I wrote about, I could bring in a food angle.”
Information in the oral history gave me the name of her son who I found on Facebook. He shared the information with his mother who then emailed me. My favorite part of her email was learning that she knew two of my other research subjects: Peggy Daum and Jeanne Voltz.
She wrote the wonderful 1971 cookbook Pot au Feu. (Pot au feu is French for “pot on the fire.”) It’s a great mixture of food stories, recipes and anecdotes about her three children. Much of women’s page content consisted of food news and family columns.
One of the columns in the book is “Working Mother Makes Rules.” She notes, “I happen to be one of those statistics, the 1-of-every-3 homemakers who hold jobs; the 1-out-of-5 mothers who juggle careers.”
In the column, she gives advice on her rules for combining work and newspapering. This was my favorite tips was: “Forget schedules. Take it one crisis at a time.”
