Women’s History Month: Josephine Gibson
Day 17 of Women’s History Month 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.
She is featured in my upcoming book, The Food Section.
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