Background
Driftmier was born Leanna Field April 3, 1886 on a farm near Shenandoah.
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Leanna Field Driftmier
Edit ProfileEducation
While in California, Driftmier attended Los Angeles State Normal College, then taught school near San Bernardino for one or two years.
Career
Driftmier’s daily 30-minute show Kitchen-Klatter was broadcast around the midwestern United States for five decades. lieutenant was the longest-running homemaker show in United States radio history. Driftmier was one of seven children.
After graduating from high school in Shenandoah, Driftmier taught school in Essex, Iowa.
She moved to California to help care for aging relatives. On a visit to her hometown she met widower Martin Driftmier.
Helen left the show in 1926. Driftmier took over the show and renamed it Kitchen-Klatter.
When a back injury forced her to bedrest in 1930, she hosted the show from her bedroom.
She used a wheelchair for the remainder of her life and broadcast thereafter from her kitchen. Broadcasting from the home became a trend followed by other homemaker hosts of the time. Kitchen-Klatter eventually moved to rival station KMA, also in Shenandoah, and was syndicated around the Midwest, reaching listeners in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and surrounding areas.
Kitchen-Klatter was a "chatty" and "instructive" show, a welcome “friend” for isolated rural women.
Driftmier shared recipes, talked about her family, offered gardening homemaking and parenting tips. She was the most well known of Shenandoah’s popular homemaker hosts, and described as an “authoratative,” “regal presence” on the air.
Early in the life of the program, Driftmier started writing a newsletter as a way to respond to listeners’ correspondence. The publication expanded and took on the name Kitchen-Klatter Magazine.
lieutenant featured a newsy letter from Driftmier, recipes, health hints, poems and book suggestions.
Driftmier wrote and published cookbooks and books on sewing. The name Kitchen-Klatter was attached to home products such as flavorings, seasonings, and cleaning products, sold out of Shenandoah. Driftmier was named Iowa Mother of the Year in 1954.
Driftmier appeared occasionally for another 17 yrs until her death on September 30, 1976.
