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 flies 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.

I swear it’s a coincidence that last week I issued a paragraph-by-paragraph takedown of PR mogul Richard Edelman’s lame and disingenuous prescription for uniting our “insular” society … and that this week I’m doing the same thing to Axios CEO Jim VandeHei’s “Blunt AI Talk” that he supposedly wrote to his kids—and then published, on Axios, for the benefit of all kids.

But how can I not?

The editor’s note that appeared atop the piece, posted on Axios late last week, claimed: “Axios CEO Jim VandeHei wrote this note to his wife, Autumn, and their three kids. She suggested sharing it more broadly since so many families are wrestling with how to think and talk about AI. So here it is …”

I’m including VandeHei’s stuff in screen shots (because I refuse to work to get WordPress to ape Axios’ asinine formatting). My stuff is in regular Boots text.

First: If he’s not trying to frighten his children, what would he tell them if he was? Second: Sources, Jim? What exactly are you “hearing, seeing” about AI, and from whom? Not AI, I hope. Third: I don’t love it when fellow members of my species condescend to tell me how my species is “wired”; I can only imagine how I might react to having my quarter-zip-clad dad telling me how my species is “wired.” Fourth: Talking about this letter on “Morning Joe” Friday, VandeHei said he’s a tech dummy and has only been fooling with AI seriously for a few weeks. He said you have to sit down and learn it, but it doesn’t take long to learn. So what’s the difference, really, if the kids learn it this weekend, or next?

So that’s where you’ve been the last few weeks, Dad. Building apps, prototyping new businesses and making your good ideas exponentially better! I wondered why you didn’t show up at my violin recital and why you kept trailing off while trying to apologize to me. Now I know. You were building digital sandcastles in the sky! And now aren’t I the analog horse’s ass?

Wait: For the last five years or so, Axios has (somehow) sold its expensive “Smart Brevity” formula to corporations, for use in their communications with employees and other stakeholders. This ad is embedded in this very article.

Now the Axios CEO says “corporate writing and editing” will be made obsolete, a fact that his children “will instantly see” upon their first dip into AI? I wonder how that landed with VandeHei’s colleague Eleanor Hawkins, editor of the Axios Communicators newsletter. And I wonder how it will land with her readers.

Yes, Sophie, turn to AI for “stirring” marketing tips. James, your fancy and gritty ideas don’t amount to a hill of shit in this new world, boy, if you can’t turn them into “working apps”! And Kelvin, sweet Kelvin: Empathy doesn’t pay the bills, lad, and exotic solutions don’t grow on trees. Get off your fucking TikTok and get on your fucking ChatGPT. Or, as your father would say …

So, according to VandeHei: 1. VandeHei has been fooling with AI for a few weeks. 2. And the entire world is going to implode because of AI in a matter of months. 3. It’s Axios-matic that “ordinary workers without savvy AI skills will be left behind.” 4. And when they do, their laggard behavior this spring will be to blame? If only we’d heeded Jim VandeHei’s “note to his kids” in January, we wouldn’t be in the bread line in June! This scenario seems as unlikely as outrunning an avalanche, on foot.

That’s probably what I’d do if I were Sophie, James or Kelvin: conserve energy and try to signal if possible, in the comfort that my family’s wealth will probably keep me warm, if my dad’s hot air isn’t enough.

VandeHei concludes with a call to action for his kids—for all of us kids!

I shared an excerpt from this letter in Friday’s Executive Communication Report, and a reader remarked: “If there’s no substantial difference between a letter you wrote to your family and a standard LinkedIn post, you’ve got bigger problems than AI.” Yes, I’m almost more offended for his family than I am for us.

But it must also be said, Jim VandeHei, you’re not our dad. And boy, are we glad.