Women’s History Month: Clarice Rowlands
Day five of Women’s History Month 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 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 and Peggy Daum became the food editor. Both Milwaukee food editors will be featured in my book, The Food Section.
