Harriet Walden (1914-2006) was on the administrative staff of the New Yorker magazine for over forty years, from 1944 to 1985. Her parents, Bernhard and Sarah Kahn, were Russian immigrants and her father owned a jewelry store. In 1944, she replaced her husband, William Walden, as Harold Ross's secretary at the New Yorker, when William went off to war. William later returned to the New Yorker as a "Talk of the Town" reporter and remained on the editorial staff until 1983. Harriet Walden continued to work as Ross's secretary until she left the New Yorker to raise her two sons. At Katharine Sergeant White's request, Walden returned to the New Yorker in 1956, to become Katharine and E. B. White's secretary. In 1968, Walden replaced Daise Terry as office manager. In this capacity, she was head of the editorial assistants, a group that was affectionately known around the office as "Walden Pond."
Walden's more general tasks at the office included typing and proofing manuscripts, managing employee subscriptions, ordering theater tickets and flowers, mailing 'roughs' on Tuesday, mailing tearsheets or copies of the magazine to staff members, and pasting the dummy magazine. In 1985, Walden officially retired from the New Yorker, but still managed E. B. White's affairs one day a week at the New Yorker offices after White's death. Walden died in New York City in 2006.
From the guide to the Harriet Walden New Yorker papers, 1926-2004, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)
