History Takes Time
It has been more than seven years since I first heard the name Eleni Epstein – the longtime fashion editor at the Washington Star. It was when Lance and I were going through papers of the National Women & Media Collection, then at the University of Missouri. Eleni kept everything so we had a lot to go through. We made at least six visits to archive to go through her papers during the years we lived in St. Louis.
Over the years, I discovered additional material about Eleni at several archives including the New York Public Library – Lance and I visited the Library and went through the papers of the Fashion Guide International during one of our trips to New York. I interviewed her step-daughter, Diane, back in 2007.
Bit by bit, I found more references to Eleni and was more impressed by her career. Initially, I wrote the article as a Washington, D.C.-based story to be submitted to a a local journal. After a long wait (more than a year), I finally got feedback for a revise and resubmit. I did not like the directions so I pulled it from the Washington, D.C. journal.
I gathered more information from a national journalism history perspective. A favorite moment was interviewing Helen Thomas at the Orlando airport about Eleni. The two were good friends.
Lance reworked the article to submit it to Media History Monographs. After a year of revising-and-resubmitting, the article was published today. It is available here.
In looking through my journal publications, I realized that most articles take 4-5 years from beginning to publication. Archival research is time consuming and some of my work is about women who left no papers behind – complete mysteries until we tell their stories. Yet, I believe these stories are important – especially regional history that I blogged about here.
