Women’s History Month: Virginia Heffington
Day 16 of Women’s History Month features Virginia Heffington – a food editor in Florida and California.
Recently, the Miami Herald cited a recipe from its 1960s food editor Virginia Heffington.
This is the book that Heffington wrote in 1968 when she was the Homemaking Editor of the Miami Herald. At that point she had been at the Herald for five years and had won a Vesta Award – the top recognition for food journalism.
In the introduction to the book, she mentioned that she was a graduate of Iowa State in home economic journalism.
I also found an archive in Canada that had ten of Virginia’s clips in its collections.
By 1971, she became the food editor at the Long Beach (CA) Independent Press-Telegram. She was kicked out of Liberace’s kitchen while covering a story. She said to the singer: “I think we should forget the story because you’re a better piano player than you are a cook. Your beef stroganoff tastes more like canned beef stew.” She co-authored a cookbook about tropical foods. By 1980, she was writing about food for the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain.
Virginia is included in my upcoming book, The Food Section.
