Pre-1978 The Best American Short Story series had a single editor. For decades, from 1915 to 1941, Edward O’Brien fulfilled this role. After his death, Martha Foley took over. Raymond Carver mentions Foley’s importance for American short fiction during his superb 1983 interview with The Paris Review:

INTERVIEWER

Is it true—a friend of yours told me this— that you celebrated your first publication by taking the magazine to bed with you?

CARVER

That’s partly true. Actually, it was a book, the Best American Short Stories annual. My story “Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?” had just appeared in the collection. That was back in the late sixties, when it was edited every year by Martha Foley and people used to call it that—simply, “The Foley Collection.” The story had been published in an obscure little magazine out of Chicago called December. The day the anthology came in the mail I took it to bed to read and just to look at, you know, and hold it, but I did more looking and holding than actual reading. I fell asleep and woke up the next morning with the book there in bed beside me, along with my wife.