Highlighting Food Editors Grace Hartley, Dorothy Crandall & Helen Dollaghan

In 2104, I worked at promoting the stories of three food editors from my book The Food Section. Jane Nickerson, Jeanne Voltz and Ruth Ellen Church. Here is a Poynter post about them.

In 2015, I plan to promote the stories of three more food editors: Grace Hartley, Dorothy Crandall & Helen Dollaghan.

Grace Hartley was the food editor at the Atlanta Journal for decades. Grace Hartley had a home economics degree from the Georgia College for Women in Milledgeville – now Georgia College. Her first job was with a social service agency where, in the depth of the Depression, she taught social workers how to plan meals for families and instructed people in food preparation. She was the food editor at the Atlanta Constitution for more than four decades, 1936 to 1970 and wrote for the newspaper’s weekly magazine for another decade.

She worked for the War Production Board during World War II. She wrote a well-respected cookbook about Southern food. She had one of the first electric ranges in Atlanta, and likely the first microwave, a massive piece of equipment that stood 5 feet tall, with a conventional oven underneath. She was married for 33 years to Judson G. Germon.

Dorothy Crandall was the food editor at the Boston Globe from 1953 to 1973. She was the editor for Julia Child’s recipe column in the Globe.

In 1959, Crandall covered the first meeting of the Boston chapter of Les Dames des Amis d’Escoffier and remained a member until her death. She earned a home economics degree from University of Vermont. While writing food features for the Sunday Globe, she took classes at Boston University in food photography and journalism.

She earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Vermont in 1952. She did food and marketing commentaries for the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Boston radio stations for five years prior joining the Globe.

Helen Dollaghan was the longtime food editor at the Denver Post. elen earned a journalism degree from the University of Denver. She was the food editor of the Denver Post from 1958 to 1993, after starting at the newspaper taking classified advertising. She tested recipes in her own kitchen. She was known for breaking ground with on-site food photography such as having photographs taken at the local Squaw Pass.

She became known for the recipe Apricot Brandy Chicken when some readers improvised and caused oven doors to be blown off. The cooks who’d had trouble admitted to modifying the recipe by adding extra brandy, then covering the casserole with foil – in essence, constructing a tiny bomb in the oven. She was considered “one of the nation’s experts on high-altitude cooking.”

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