The Child Nutrition Archives houses a wide variety of public and private papers within its manuscript collections ranging from the early twentieth century until the present. These collections may include artifacts, publications, photographs, video, correspondence, and working papers.

Guides to the Collections

The collections listed below are processed and open to researchers.
Please check back often as more finding aids are added to this page.

American School Food Service News
The ASFSA (American School Food Service Association) was organized on October 11, 1946. It strives to see that all children have access to healthful school meals and nutrition education. The collection consists of 12 issues of the “American School Food Service News” from 1949 – 1955 and 2 copies of the “journal” from the 1957 St. Louis meeting.

Lucille Barnett Collection
Lucille Barnett served as Supervisor of County and City School Food Service in Spartanburg, South Carolina for many years. From 1973-1974 she served as American School Food Service Association President. She currently resides in South Carolina.

Elizabeth Beavers Collection
Elizabeth Beavers is an Oklahoma native who dedicated many years of service to child nutrition both in that state and in Texas. Her double major in Home Economics and Business gave her a solid base on which to build a long and highly rewarding career.

Lova Jean Bullman Collection
Lova Jean Bullman is Director of Child Nutrition at Dorchester School District Two in South Carolina. She served as President of the South Carolina School Food Service Association 2000-2001. The collection consists of photographs of Bullman, staff, and events.

Earnestine Camp Collection
Earnestine Camp from Sheridan, Arkansas has been actively involved in the school food service profession for over 60 years. She served as an Area Supervisor in the School Food Service Section of the Arkansas Department of Education from 1953 – 1987 and has served as Southwest Regional Director for the American School Food Service Association.

Pat Deckert Collection
Pat Deckert was a food service director and later a food broker before finishing her career as a consultant with the Texas Education Agency. Her collection consists of USDA recipes, Texas state child nutrition publications, and memorabilia from her career.

Connecticut Bureau of Adult Education and Nutrition Programs Collection
This collection, donated by the state of Connecticut, contains items that document the legislative history of the National School Lunch Program and its impact in the schools across the country.

Thelma G. Flanagan Papers
Thelma Flanagan was involved in nutrition programs in the State of Florida from the 1930s until her death in 2001. She became the Florida School Food Service Director in 1943, served as school lunch consultant to the USDA; was President of the American School Food Service Assoc.; Chairman of the Southern States Work Conference Committee and was the author of numerous publications regarding school feeding programs. The collection documents the history of Florida’s state initiatives in the area of child nutrition and the growth of the school lunch program as a key portion of that effort.

Stan Garnett Collection
Stan Garnett grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. He served in the Peace Corps and worked for the Catholic Relief Service early in his career. He joined the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service in 1971 and worked in child nutrition programs there for thirty-six years. He retired as the Director of Child Nutrition Programs in December 2007. The collection dates from the 1940s to 2007. Materials in the collection include government documents, correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, posters, and other memorabilia.

Marcelle Landry Collection
Marcelle Landry, a proud native of the French Quarter, served for many years with the Louisiana Department of Education as Assistant Director, School Food Services, before joining the Archdiocese of New Orleans as Supervisor of School Food Services. Though now retired, Mrs. Landry is still very active with the Louisiana School Food Service Association, of which she is a past president. The Marcelle Landry Collection is composed of correspondence, books, and photographs.

Kansas School Food Service Association Collection / School Nutrition Association of Kansas 
The Kansas School Food Service Association (KSFSA) was founded in 1953 and today is known as the School Nutrition Association of Kansas (SNAKS). The collection consists of materials from every decade of the organization’s existence. It was donated by SNAKS following the death of Ms. Elizabeth H. Mettling, who had served as President and later as historian for KSFSA.

Lexington County South Carolina District 3 School Collection
The Lexington County (South Carolina) School District 3 is located in Batesburg-Leesville, South Carolina. In Spring 1992, former School Food Services Director Pat Holstein and her staff compiled a scrapbook of photographs and articles on their program and submitted it to the South Carolina Department of Education for nomination to the USDA first annual Best Practices Award Program. The collection consists of a copy of the scrapbook and additional photographs of School Food Service staff and children.

Maine Department of Education Collection
This collection, donated by the Maine Department of Education, consists of the USDA publication The Food Buying Guide for Type A School Lunches, published in 1977.

Dr. Josephine Martin Papers
Dr. Josephine Martin served as the first Executive Director of the National Food Service Management Institute (NFSMI) from 1991-1996. Prior to that she worked as Director of School Nutrition Programs and Associate State Superintendent of Schools for the Georgia Department of Education. During her career, she assisted and testified before government committees at state and federal levels. She currently serves as an honorary advisor for the Georgia School Nutrition Association (GSNA). Dr. Martin served as American School Food Service Association President for 1976-77. She is the co-editor of Managing Child Nutrition Programs: Leadership for Excellence, published in 1999; updated in a second edition in 2008.

Marshall Matz Papers
During the 1980s and 1990s, Marshall Matz served as general counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs and also as Special Counsel to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry and as a lawyer for the American School Food Service Association. The collection contains documents concerning national Child Nutrition Programs as well as some state initiatives.

Ruth Moskowitz Collection
Ruth Moskowitz, R.D. served as New Jersey’s Director of Food and Nutrition Services throughout the 1980s. Moskowitz’s collection reflects the political realities of a program very much dependent on state and federal funding and is indicative of the need for food service professionals to keep themselves properly informed as to the history and progress of their profession and the field of child nutrition in particular.

Mary Nix Collection
Mary Nix grew up in Gordon County, Georgia during the late 1930s and 1940s. She started work in the School Lunch Program in the ninth grade, washing pots and pans at her high school. After graduating she went on to become School Food Service Supervisor for Gordon County, and later, after graduating from the University of Georgia in 1969, she became Bartow County’s first School Food Service Director. She worked for Georgia’s Department of Education for a number of years and then served as Assistant Director of School Food Services in Cobb County Georgia, where she resides. Nix was President of the American School Food Service Association from 1981 – 1982.

Ohio Department of Education, Office of Child Nutrition Collection
Ohio Department of Education, Office of Child Nutrition manages the Child Nutrition Programs in the State of Ohio. The collection consists of handouts, booklets, and newsletters; as well as resource material such as articles, publications and reports to school superintendents. These materials are from the time-period of the 1950s through early 2000s.

Oregon Department of Education Collection
The Oregon Department of Education Food and Nutrition Service manages the Child Nutrition Programs in the State of Oregon. This collection contains an array of government publications related to Child Nutrition, including healthy lunch options, manuals regarding standards for child nutrition, and materials prepared for congressional hearings. These materials are from the 1940s through the early 2000s.

Mary Paden Collection
Mary Paden served for 29 years as cafeteria manager at Overstreet Elementary School, in Starkville, Mississippi. The collection consists primarily of School Food Service publications and posters from 1946 – 1971.

Dr. Vivian Pilant/ South Carolina Office of School Food Service and Nutrition Collection
Vivian Pilant grew up in Martin, Tennessee. She held a bachelor’s degree in Home Economics from the University of Tennessee at Martin, a master’s degree in Institution Management and a doctorate in Nutrition from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She began her career as Director of School Food Services and Nutrition Education for Weakley County, Tennessee. In August 1970, she went to work as a Coordinator of School Food Services in Jacksonville, Duval County, Florida, where she remained for five years. In 1975, Dr. Pilant began work with the South Carolina Department of Education Office of School Food Services as a consultant or “state supervisor.” From 1979 until 2009, she served as Director of School Food Services for South Carolina. Dr. Pilant served as president of the American School Food Service Association (ASFSA) (1994 – 1995). She testified five times before Congressional committees on matters concerning food and nutrition education training. During her time as ASFSA president she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent treatment. Dr. Pilant died March 29, 2010.

Eleanor Pratt Collection
Eleanor Pratt served as home economist at the USDA Southeast Regional Office in Atlanta for 34 years. During that time she worked with school personnel responsible for School Lunch and School Breakfast programs in the nine individual states in the region at that time. She developed training materials, taught workshops, and spoke at various meetings. She retired in 1994. Her collection consists of training and resource materials she used during her time as home economist.

School Nutrition Services Dietetic Practice Group Newsletters Collection
Nutrition Link
The School Nutrition Services/DPG Quarterly Newsletter
Volume 28, No. 4, December 2003 – Volume 33 No. 4, Fall 2008
2 copies of each.

Paul Schmitz Collection
Paul Schmitz was a native of Dallas, Texas. After briefly teaching he went to work for the USDA and spent almost all of his career working with the Child Nutrition Programs in the South West Regional Office in Dallas. Schmitz retired in December 2004 after 42 years in Federal service. His last position was Section Chief for Program Development. Schmitz passed away in April 2005.

Lou Simoneaux Collection
Lou Simoneaux, a native of Napoleonville, Louisiana, spent twenty-nine years of her child nutrition career in Assumption Parish, most of this time as Food Service Director. The Lou Simoneaux Collection contains photographs and newspaper articles.

Texas Region VII Education Service Center Collection
The Region VII Education Service Center is in east Texas, along the border of Louisiana and Arkansas. This collection contains materials from Region VII Child Nutrition Program Specialists Pauline Moctiller and Dorothy Hopkins. The materials, dating from 1950 – 1983, include manuals and guidebooks produced by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and printed materials from various food service companies and associations.

USDA Southwest Regional Office / Mary K. McDermott Collection
The Southwest region of the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service originally operated in the states of Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Later, the region was trimmed to include only Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. As featured in this collection, there are documents pertaining to private school, as well as public, lunch programs. Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas currently have USDA offices for both public and private school lunch programs. Mary Kay McDermott, retired USDA Southwest Regional office Program Specialist, donated the collection.

Vermont Child Nutrition Programs Collection
The collection, donated by the Vermont Department of Education, consists of USDA, Food Research and Action Center, several state departments of education publications and printed materials, and programs from Vermont’s annual School Nutrition Conference.

Gene White Collection
Gene White grew up in Ohio and attended Miami University of Ohio, graduating with degrees in Home Economics Education and Nutrition, which was called Dietetics at that time. She then continued her graduate education at Ohio State University. She worked more than twenty years as Food Service Director in China Lake, California. She went on to become that state’s Director of Nutrition Services in the late 1970s and while in that position she served as President of the American School Food Service Association from 1977-1978. Currently she is involved with international feeding programs. The collection contains approximately 4 linear feet of child nutrition materials mostly from the early 1970s to the late 1990s.