It was at her yellow Formica kitchen table in Mount Vernon in 1951 that Lilli Menasche Hochberg, a 24-year-old married woman pregnant with her first child, started what would become Lillian Vernon, an eponymous mail-order business of personalized items that would see sales of $300 million at its height and employ some 5,000 workers across Westchester County and several states.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is hosting a ceremony today to receive artifacts from the family of business entrepreneur and philanthropist Lillian Vernon (1927-2015).