One of the unhappy consequences of there being shite trade news coverage anymore in the world of corporate communications is that we don’t hear when our heroes die.
In 2011, public relations pioneer Chet Burger died nine months before I found out, which was a shame because I considered him a mentor. Communications strategy guru Les Potter died last April, and a protege of his didn’t find out until this month. Legendary corporate journalism teacher Don Ranly died November 10 and nobody in this business heard about it until a couple weeks ago.
And I just learned yesterday from a few communication colleagues that Wilma Mathews died the day after Ranly did, on November 11.
There is no published obituary, only her bio, on the website of Arizona State University, where she was a faculty associate until she retired in 2008. Luckily the bio isn’t bad, and it was probably written by Wilma herself. After mentioning her big corporate career at AT&T and her teaching and her authorship of a media relations standard text, On Deadline, the bio concludes with a graph labeled, “Now, for the real stuff:
Wilma is an avid mystery, biography and history reader. She enjoys travel and is the consummate tourist, tramping through zoos and old houses with equal aplomb. She is an unabashed fan for the University of North Carolina basketball team. She likes backgammon and Jeopardy and uses knitting, needlework and reading in lieu of tranquilizers. Her greatest moments in life include being a sponsor for a young boy in Indonesia. Among her greatest adventures is being attacked by a one-armed gibbon at an elephant camp in Thailand.
Not mentioned is a cruise Wilma took in the Bering Strait—as a deckhand on a freighter—sometime in her 50s, as I remember. Not mentioned is what Wilma and her generation of ambitious women executives endured in the 1970s in order to ascend through what was then called “the velvet ghetto” of corporate communications—one of few corporate departments that would hire women. Or “girls,” as they were still called by a lot of the men. Not mentioned is how Wilma came out of all that with her humanity not only intact, but accentuated—and expressed, as a mentor to many younger women and men coming up.
And also not mentioned is the very first of many conversations I had with Wilma, over the first 20 years of my career. This was in 1992, and I was only a few months into my first job, at a weekly PR trade newsletter called The Ragan Report, and doing a story on Wilma’s work at AT&T then. In the trailing fallout of the Ma Bell breakup, the company was closing plants and other facilities, one after another. It was Wilma’s job to parachute in and orchestrate those closings in an elaborate procedure that involved the site manager learning at the very last minute. It was humane, Wilma explained, because the alternative was the guy knowing, and trying to go about his work for even an hour among his crew, as if everything was normal.
After Wilma’s forty-something self walked my twenty-four-year-old self through the process that she was executing at leasts several times a year, I thought to ask her how she was affected by that gut-wrenching work. Without hesitating, she told me she flew home on a Friday night and “I curl up for the weekend, with my best friend. Jack Daniel’s.”
Could I actually quote her on that?
“Sure!” she said with a laugh—and I had my first good quote, my first good source, my first good story—”The Angel of Downsizing,” was the title, I think—and my first real friend in the communication business. And real was what Wilma Mathews was. Tough, funny, salty, vulnerable, prideful, humble, decent and above all, honest.
Her kind never grew on trees. Sometimes, it seems in this Land of LinkedIn Logrolling, her kind doesn’t grow at all anymore.
Anyway, Wilma: Say hi to Lou. And see about getting a bigger table, because the crowd never gets smaller.
She was a gem.
Damn
I met Wilma soon after she moved to Phoenix in the mid 1990s. I was told she used to work at AT&T and thought “OK, another stuffy East Coast corporate type…” Then she talked about working on a freighter, I believe part of the time as a cook, and thought, “this is a lady with a lot of sand …” I subsequently got to know her better and received the benefit of great advice, sometimes over adult beverages–for her, Jack Daniels and ginger ale.
Yep, Mark—and Glynn and Dan—that’s the same lady we’re talking about. And if you think I’m embarrassed that I accidentally exaggerated a bit and called her a “deckhand” on that freighter … well, I’m leaving it there, cuz Wilma was larger than life, and so she still is.
Soon after joining AT&T at a manufacturing plant in 1988, I joined IABC and quickly learned that Wilma was a legend in both organizations. She was as you describe her and more. She was always kind to this young pup in the giant AT&T world, but as I grew into my own shoes, we didn’t always agree — especially on IABC matters.
Here’s the thing, though. I’m kinda pissed that I had to learn about Les Potter’s death 8 months after it happened. He was my mentor. We spent hours and days together. And I’m kinda pissed that Wilma did nothing more than write her bio for a website.
My dad is a pastor. He always said, “Funerals are for the living.” Meaning, what we do after someone passes away is not for them, but for us. It gives us space to process, to mourn, to come together with others who are affected by their deaths in unique ways and to share the experience in common. I find it selfish, to say the least, that these two giants of our profession would just leave the party without saying goodbye. They owed us more than that for the many years that we hung on their every word and learned at their knees.
Wow, Robert. I’m going to ascribe some of this to your grief about Les. But this anger at him, and at Wilma is entirely misplaced. You don’t know and I don’t know what they were dealing with in their last years, but whatever it was I’m sure it was much more immediate and troublesome than scheduling their own going-away party for some long-ago communication mentee from the 1990s.
If anyone should be pissed at anyone, we should be pissed at ourselves for thinking a few times a year for the last 15, “Wilma Mathews. I wonder what’s up with her these days.” And not bothering to ask around and find out.
Personally, I forgive us that. Life flows fast.
You could blame IABC, too, for not honoring its heritage or listening to its prominent members … but that’s been a problem for years.
But I certainly won’t blame Les and Wilma and Don and Chet for not planning their own farewell tour.
I’m so glad I found your post about Wilma. I joined the authorship of On Deadline for the 6th edition, but sadly, Wilma was not able at that point to participate in the project, so I never met her. She sounds like a fantastic person and PR pioneer, so thank you for giving me a glimpse into her life!
Onward, JSH! Best of luck in your role carrying Wilma’s work on.