Reba Merrill is an author, lecturer, and broadcast journalist. Reba and I crossed paths several decades back when I was host of a TV show in Louisville, and she supplied me with Hollywood celebrity feature stories. I read recently that one Hollywood wag dubbed “The Queen of the Hollywood Press Junket.” Merrill came to Los Angeles and sought to build a brand in entertainment journalism at the unheard of age of 47 — unheard of because, for a woman at that time, 47 was over the hill. So after assorted trials and tribulations, she beat the odds and overcame both misogyny and ageism. Now, her lengthy career has been capped off with a major honor: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated Merrill for inclusion in a vault created with funding provided by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. The vault, housed at the University of Southern California, contains items chronicling the history of Hollywood.