My Ad Man Wasn't A Mad Man

They were an unexpected breath of fresh air as they walked into my office located in the corner of a tire warehouse. My assignment in 1987 was to conduct a promotional campaign for an elite service organization's fall conference in Vancouver. The boss had given me $30,000 to spend, and recommended a small ad agency whom he had used previously from time to time.

After the door closed, and the tow motor noise quietened a little, I discovered the ad man, Bob, and his graphic artist and writer partner, Sally, were gracious, non-threatening, and very interesting. It took me  two minutes to decide these people had my business.  Bob was tall, outgoing and a little on the loud side, while the graphic artist, a beautiful blond, was more reserved and quiet. I learned that wasn't a correct assessment. Sally and I had hour-long, animated discussions in her office more times than not.

They helped me with a successful campaign and produced some great work at a reasonable price.

After the campaign I sent what little business I had their way, and we kept in contact. Bob had teased me and said, "if you ever want to go out on your own, I need someone to be my PR arm of the business". While I had a good job (making a lot more than the previous one), I didn't give the suggestion much thought.

Christmas with Dede, Sally and Bob

That changed one day in 1989; I walked into my office and was told that money had run out, and I would be jobless that afternoon. Lot of notice, right? I told the CFO who delivered the news "I would have worn black if I knew this was going to happen today." 

Trying not to panic (a single mom with an eight-year-old), I was faced with the immediate need of finding another job. I called Bob on vacation in Florida; our conversation went something like this:

"Bob, you told me I'd work with you sooner or later. How does sooner sound? I am unemployed."

"Sure Betty come into my office next week and let's talk about it."

That began a two-year association which provided more fun than I can describe and kept a roof over my head. Bob gave me an office and the necessary items to work, and in turn he received a part of what I brought in with selling my PR and marketing skills.

Being self-employed is not my cup of tea because I've never been good at confrontation, and when people don't pay their bills, there's bound to be confrontation. While I was giving it my best shot, the days were filled with laughter and great stories. Bob's dad had been one of the first ad men in Nashville, and Bob grew up in the business. I found out about campaigns that they had conducted for some of Nashville's most popular merchants.

Digging the 80's hair

Sally and Bob dealt with frustration in a rather unusual way.  It might include Bob humming "If I Only Had A Brain" from the Wizard of Oz when a client had requested something totally stupid. Or, Sally giving the "Velvet Elvis Award" or my bestowing the "Chocolate Covered Fish" trophy to a client or prospect who was not in the real world.

Fax machines were making their way into offices all over Nashville, and when ours was installed, we watched it like a chicken laying an egg until the first piece of paper rolled out of the technologically advanced device. My how things have changed. We thought we were so sophisticated and up to date with the fax. It did cut down on the trips to the printer, typesetter and clients. In 1991, after suffering through a couple of full-time job prospects that didn't materialize, I finally found a place in another ad agency where I'd be paid a salary and wouldn't have to do any bill collecting. It was a nice place to work, but never as much fun.

Jon Hamm

By now I hope you realize Bob was not a slick ad man like the ones portrayed on  AMC's Mad Men. We weren't on Madison Avenue, but the processes were the same. I'm not being critical of  Mad Men; I've watched every episode and would be entertained just to watch John Hamm brush his teeth.

Bob had a huge heart, had raised his children as a single Dad for several years, remarried a lovely woman and would never consider anyone else being his partner in life.

A while back, Bob passed away, and it was like a light went out for those of us who knew and worked with him. Sally and I still eat lunch from time to time; she's one of the most entertaining and creative people I know.

When I stop to count my blessings, spending a couple of years with Bob, Sally and the gang is on the short list.

One Lucky Girl

My mother would have celebrated her 90th birthday this coming Saturday. I could write hundreds of tributes to her, but one of her best efforts dealt with my career. When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a nurse--the result of too many young Dr. Kildare day dreams. After volunteering at Maury Regional Hospital for a year, nursing didn't seem like such a great job for me. That fall, I was asked to be a reporter for the weekly happenings at Culleoka High School for the Columbia Daily Herald.  I was hooked. Didn't know how I was going to do it, but journalism was my goal. 
When I graduated high school, it wasn't acceptable for young girls in my family to work retail, so Mom called the wife of Herald publisher, Sam Kennedy. All she did was ask if they would be hiring anyone for vacation relief. Mom and Betty had been Sunday School buddies in Culleoka when they were girls.

My bosses, Jim Finney and Dick Hines at the
Columbia Daily Herald

To say I had a "stage mom" wouldn't be quite accurate, but she wasn't going to leave anything to chance if it involved her offspring.  I loved  the job...every nerve racking, stressful second of it. A Pentax camera was shoved in my hand, and I was told to click that button, and this button, and shoot. This was before automatic cameras, and I'd never heard of an F-Stop. I would drop off my film in the dark room and say "Marvin, pray for this; it's probably over exposed." Also taking Polaroid shots of extra-long rattlesnakes people brought by the office was in my job description. It was a fantastic education because I worked in every department of the paper except the press room and paste up. 
That fall, the same people who hired me at the Herald collaborated with the Dean of Students at Columbia State Community College and thought I'd make an okay editor of the Columbia State Open Door newspaper. The Dean of Students said my only objective was "get it out on a regular basis. The people at the Herald will help you."  Those dear people at the Herald were already aware of what I knew and the vast amount of what I didn't know. They were my guardian angels.

The young and very inexperienced editor
during an interview at CSCC .

In the fall of 1971 my best friend and I transferred to MTSU to finish our degrees. The second semester of that year, journalism became a full major under the Department of Mass Communications. I was in the second class to graduate from the new school under the direction of Ed Kimbrell, a young reporter hired away from the Louisville Courier Journal. To say he was a guiding force in my life would be an understatement. Plus, I had a huge crush on him and would have listened to him recite the dictionary. However, I was called to work on a professional level with him as an assistant to earn my "work-study" scholarship at MTSU. Four days a week I ran errands, typed, and anything else his secretary didn't want to do at 8:00 a.m. 
By being in his office, I learned he was working on convincing Channel 2, then WSIX, to hire a news department intern on a semester-by-semester basis. It was a year-long lobbying effort on my part to convince Dr. Kimbrell that I would be the best representative for MTSU's brand new Mass Communications Department. There was a rival at the MTSU radio station, but in the end, the internship was mine. Today's world would assume I was doing non-secretarial duties to earn the job, but this was 1970, and I just worshiped him from afar.

True to my word, I gave the Mass
Communications Department good PR.

The station hired me as a full-time Capitol Hill reporter, but my TV career was short-lived. The pay was low (minimum wage for the first year and a half), and at that time WNGE Channel 2 didn't promote their news. When I asked why our anchor team didn't have their pictures on the sides of buses, the general manager, a former engineer for the station, told me they didn't promote things people didn't like. The future wasn't bright, and I was offered the position of press secretary to a congressional candidate which paid a lot better.
That being said, a kid from Culleoka had made it to the 30th TV market in the U. S., and my dream had come true. 
Times have changed so much that my mother's gesture wouldn't see the light of day. However, at that time and in that place, it introduced me to the world and gave me experiences I'll never forget. Luck doesn't begin to describe it.
Thanks Mom.

Gulfs and Oceans to Recall

It looks as though a beach vacation isn't going to happen this year. So I decided to relive some time spent relaxing in Key West. There was also a trip to Jamaica mixed in somewhere, but I can't find that CD. Some of these photos motivate me to keep walking and pass up that piece of pie. To more fun in the sun...

The first trip to Key West was in 2003. .

The view from Sunset Pier

Great place to celebrate a sunset!

Panama City Beach it isn't

Can you tell the conch fritters
 didn't agree with me?

Dinner cruise at sunset

Same profile in 2005, but
without conch fritters

Celebrating Sunsets in 2010
KW Trip #3

I added gray hair and subtracted several pounds.
The swap was fine with me.

A cup of coffee and view..how can the day go wrong?

Sixty Years of Sunday School

Being Sunday, it seemed appropriate to talk about something that has been a part of my life since infancy, literally. Central Presbyterian Church didn't have a nursery. By the time I was able to be held in the Primary Teacher Miss Mary Lou Harris' lap, I went to Sunday School.  Mom played the organ and Dad was in the choir, and with Miss Mary Lou being a cousin (we all called her "Auntie"), the Sunday School became my home away from home.

A young Mary Lou Harris (center)

Auntie was a wonderful teacher who was self-taught, plus she had the biggest, softest lap of anyone I knew (of course my lap experience was somewhat limited at age six weeks). In big church I was held my Dad's mom who was probably my age...she seemed ancient to me, but she had a big, soft lap as well. I think society has forgotten the key role loving laps play in a child's life.  Today we look at the extra girth as something to be gotten rid of by diet and exercise and forget it provides an easy way to  build a baby's sense of security. (My mental-health-professional-in-training niece will probably say this is a bunch of hog wash, but that's o.k. it's my blog.)

Back to Sunday School...how many of our parents knotted a nickel in a handkerchief specifically designated for the SS offering which went to missionary work of the Presbyterian Church? At Central we sang a song "Go Little Pennies, go and say, Jesus the Savior strong and true, loves every one of you." 

Easter @ Central

BMW--the Primary Years

The primary years made a deep impression on me. We didn't have a felt board, but Auntie made Bible stories come alive with colored cartoon pictures and the way she talked about them. Later I found out when a test was given by the Presbytery for Bible knowledge, Auntie made the highest score. Those stories in all their vivid color and detail came back to me when I taught. I can still see the picture of the Tower of Babel in my mind.

At our house we had a routine on Saturday night; you ate supper, took your bath, studied your Sunday School lesson and watched Lawrence Welk. Then you went to bed because you had to be up and at it for Sunday School the next morning. 

I still can't stand to watch Lawrence Welk.

My Dad taught the Men's Bible Class at Central from the time he was 18 (after the former teacher, his grandfather, passed away) until he was 70 or so. He begged others to take his place, but no one would agree. I saw him pray and worry that he wasn't leading them as well as someone else could; nevertheless, he wouldn't just let the class go without a teacher. He never used notes. He would hold the quarterly (that's what they called the SS book) in his hand as a prop, but the information and the commentary  was in his head. Through the years our family bought William Barkley commentaries for him as Christmas and birthday gifts because he loved what Barkley had to say about Christianity and how to live it. As an adult teacher I borrowed them from time to time. I reminded my classes I was quoting  the Gospel according to William Barkley, not Charles Barkley, who was at that time starting his ESPN career as a sports analyst.

One of my proudest Sunday School moments was when my Dad let me teach for him. He didn't get a break very often; vacations were Monday-Friday and weekend trips always ended Saturday night. It was a daunting task because I knew how well he did it 52 weeks out of the year. I joked and told him my teaching would make the class appreciate him more. My more modern humorous comments fell like a lead balloon. The Bible lesson was about Esau and Jacob meeting each other after years of estrangement. It's the story where Jacob brings all his wives, children, servants, sheep, etc. with him. I thought it would be relevant to compare this to the Bob Newhart show which was popular at the time. And I said Jacob's introduction probably went like this: "Hi, I'm Larry, and this is my brother Daryl and my other brother Daryl." No one got it. Good thing I wasn't making a career out of being a comedian.

Currently, I am taking a break from teaching  Adult Sunday School. It was a task I loved, but after 20 year I felt burned out. It's a challenge to be on your game every Sunday ( like my Dad, I didn't miss many). Seeing those wonderful class members gave me the strength and courage to go through my Mom's heart surgery, Dad's dementia and their deaths less than four weeks apart in 2006. The class was my "Balm in Gilead." They taught me so much about love.

I wish everyone could know the kind of spiritual and emotional support Sunday School has to offer. First Presbyterian Franklin has an incredibly strong Christian Education program, and I know that many children and adults have been told God loves them when the world seems like a very scary place

Thanks be to God and all the  "Aunties".

What's In A Name?

My name: Merrill as in Merrill Lynch sans the money. Mom's name was Betty, Dad's was Merrill, and since I was going to be a Girl Raised In The South (GRITS), they put the two together for a creative double name.

The Blog: This is an effort to keep my outlook on life positive. As I have grown older (not wiser),  cynicism sticks its sneaky claws into my mind, and that's not how I want to be whether I'm 6 or 60.

What can be accomplished? Bring smiles and good memories to you and me as I recount situations that are funny, hopeful, and sometimes self-deprecating. One of my favorite writers is Anne Lamott. She talks about serious topics that could bring tears, but manages to make us laugh in spite of it all.

Edward Merrill and Betty June Denton 1946

Back to my name--A double name like Betty Merrill in a tiny southern town wound up getting pronounced all in one syllable BMerrill; in high school, my friends discovered that Merrill rhymed with squirrel, (that wasn't a complimentary term) so it was Merrill the Squirrel. Then there were the good folks who pronounced it like Merle, as in Merle Haggard. When I started college it was quickly shortened to Betty. Heaven forbid anyone think Merrill was my maiden name! At that point in my life I was doing well to get a date. I didn't need the negative publicity when roll was called in class.

Do I expect anyone to read this? It is unlikely, save for a few of my relatives and friends who will be embarrassed if I ask them what they thought and they can't answer. I'm praying the friends and relatives I have who are grammar whizzes will forgive my faux pas. Even though reading was my favorite past time,  I never could get it straight where the commas were supposed to go... too much like Algebra to suit me. There will be mixed metaphors galore, so get ready. Melatropism will be around because my maternal grandmother was a master at it, and the gene pool is deep. Her most famous one is "the atheists were eating up her potted plants". Those pesky Godless bugs can take over a planter in a second.

John Harold (Hal) and Betty Merrill Denton 1953

If this hasn't put you to sleep already, thanks for reading it. Use it like Ambien; you won't get up in the middle of the night and not realize it.

Ever thankful!  bmw