I’m a Florida boy. Didn’t see snow till I was a junior in college at Michigan State University. I graduated in 1957 (Dick Nixon gave the commencement address) and came to New York and Allied Stores hired me as an executive sales Promotion trainee—for $3400 a year—I took home $200 a month after taxes.
Yes, I remember those days. They didn’t hurt. A few years later, married by then, we had our first child—in Syracuse. I was up to $6,000 a year as a copywriter. When my second daughter came along 19 months later, I was working in NYC for a small ad agency for $9,000 a year. Overnight (it seems) I was a creative copy supervisor in a giant agency, and we were richer than Croesus—I was earning $30,000 a year. We lived in Larchmont, NY, as pretty and nice a town as you can find for raising children. Then one day, because I always knew there were other trees to climb, I accepted a big job as Creative Director of the largest advertising office in South America—J. Walter Thompson’s Buenos Aires, Argentina office. They moved the four of us plus all our furnishings of a nine room house.
It was exciting. The girls were 11 and 9, and we were there for some politically circus-worthy years—Peron, who had raped Argentina in earlier years with his killer wife, Evita at his side, returned to Argentina, and the Argentines did the impossible—re-elected Juan Peron as President, and he named his new wife, Isabellita, as Vice-President. Then Juan died, and She, yes, that one, became La Presidente! What else happened those years? Oh yes, Nixon resigned, whenever I was in NYC on business all people could talk about was Watergate, but all that mattered to me were The Peronistas in Argentina; the Junta in Chile; and the Tupamaros in Uruguay. I learned back then you can’t live on two continents. And besides, I had Ford, Pan Am, Kodak and Lever Brothers, depending on my creative leadership, plus a staff of 40 Creativos. My secretary was a young Communist. He didn't speak one word of English. Working overseas puts a lot of demands on you.
