Lenore Hershey (1919–1997)

Lenore Hershey graduated from Hunter College and began her career in the promotion department of The New York Herald Tribune. She was hired by McCall's Magazine in 1952. She was executive editor when she left McCall's in 1968 to become managing editor of The Ladies' Home Journal. She was named editor-in-chief in 1973, three years after feminists had staged a daylong sit-in at the magazine demanding that a woman be named editor. For a long time Mrs. Hershey was the sole woman at the Ladies Home Journal above middle management. In 1981, she was named president and editorial director of a new multimedia subsidiary of The Journal's parent company, the Charter Publishing Company.

Mrs. Hershey gave seminars on the role of women in the economy that led to the creation in 1972 of the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Economic Role of Women, on which she served. Susan Brownmiller said of Mrs. Hershey that she belonged to a generation of tough lady editors who sat at their desks in flowered hats.