John Brown's first lesson in commerce was as a ten-year-old boy, buying and reselling boxes of Christmas and holiday cards to customers in bars and restaurants in his hometown, Albany, Oregon. After high school he joined the U.S. Air Force hoping for some adventures around the world. Instead, he spent the next 3-1/2 years at McChord AFB near Tacoma working as an accounting clerk. He met his wife-to-be after a co-worker in the accounting office brought her to see his performance as an M.C. in an Air Force talent contest called Tops in Blue. He won local and regional contests and finally competed for a spot on the Ed Sullivan show. During his college years at the University of Puget Sound he worked as a bill collector for Weisfield's Jewelers. After graduating with a BA in English in 1964 he tried unsuccessfully to find a job in an advertising agency. He was selling "Selectric" typewriters for IBM when an odd coincidence prompted Cole & Weber to give him a shot at the business. During his career there and at John Brown & Partners he has won more than 400 awards for excellence in copywriting and creative direction. His biggest regret: turning down the offer to merge John Brown & Partners with Chiat/Day when he had the chance. He has six grandkids from son Jason, a director producer and daughter Julie, a homemaker.
Steve Darland worked, starting at age 18, in the weekly newspaper business in Kent during studies at UW, then in the agency business (and politics) in Seattle, Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles (the last 3 cities with JWT), then worldwide for J. Walter Thompson as Director of Brand for all agency clients - and as a member of the agency's 10-person Executive Committee that manages JWT's 200+ worldwide offices.
In Seattle and while still in college, Steve worked at Frederick E. Baker Advertising, Inc., then after returning west, he worked at McCann and with Don Kraft. Between these last 2 Seattle agency jobs, he founded The Consortium in which his marketing services firm, Concept Management, Inc., was a leading player in work on public service, non-profit, often government or community assignments and those in the arts. He was a two-term Washington State Arts Commissioner.
Steve and his wife Jane now own and operate several small, adjacent organic farms in the historic adobe village of Monticello, New Mexico at a mile altitude, growing for the local farmers' market - with several specialty products, including their rare, acclaimed traditional-style balsamic vinegar, aged since 1998. Organic Balsamic, Edible (Santa Fe) magazine named them 2011 "Artisans of the Year" for New Mexico.
Ron Elgin is a homegrown product who was born in Milwaukee but moved
to Seattle at the age of two. He grew up in the High Point Housing
Project and attended both West Seattle and Sealth High Schools before
graduating from Edison Tech in 1959. He worked at the Stacy Street
Rail Yard and a gas station while in high school and at the Renton
Boeing Plant while attending and graduating from the University of
Washington in 1965. He went to work for Cole & Weber but was drafted
and commissioned as an officer after graduating from OCS in 1967 and
served two years in Germany. His fiance, Bonnie, came to Europe and
they were married in Basel, Switzerland in 1969 and the couple took a
year-long European honeymoon. He returned to Seattle and Cole & Weber
in 1971. Daughter Alison was born in 1972. The rest, as they say, is
history and his highly successful advertising career is well
documented in the accompanying commentary that Ron chose to write in
the third person.
Jerry Hoeck has had a long and distinguished career in advertising and public consulting and public service. In politics, he was particularly active in directing the campaigns and advising U.S. Senators Warren G. Magnuson and Henry M. Jackson. At UW, Hoeck worked on The Daily and for Columns, the campus humor magazine. On December 7, 1941, during his senior year at UW, Pearl Harbor was attacked. Hoeck and his Daily coworkers rushed to put out a special edition of the paper. He was later inducted into the UW Communication Alumni Hall of Fame.
At first, Hoeck wanted to join the Army Air Force; instead he stayed at UW to study Japanese. In spring, he was recruited to join the Navy's first Japanese Language School. He fought at Saipan, Tinian, and Iwo Jima. After the war, he was a founding partner of a Seattle advertising agency: Miller, McKay, Hoeck and Hartung. The agency was well known for its innovative creative work.
Hoeck's greatest passion was politics, and he soon became involved in the Democratic party. He worked on Warren Magnuson's 1948 Congressional campaign and his 1950 U.S. Senate campaign. In 1952, Hoeck helped young U.S. Rep. Henry M. Jackson in his U.S. Senate race, as well.
In 1960, he took a three-month leave of absence from the agency, and served as the advertising manager of the Democratic National Committee. After the election, he returned to Seattle, and continued to work for local Democrats, playing a major role in the 1964 election of four Washington state congressmen: Tom Foley, Brock Adams, Lloyd Meeds, and Floyd Hicks. In 1972 and 1976, he worked on the Jackson presidential campaigns.
Hoeck has been very active in community service, offering his advertising and marketing expertise to a wide variety of causes and organizations, including: the bond election for the Seattle Center, Civic Unity Committee, numerous Seattle School bond campaigns, Forward Thrust, and the slogan for the 1962 Seattle World's Fair "Century 21."
Bill Hoke came to Seattle via agencies in New York, Detroit and
Los Angeles and has been a broadcast writer-producer, creative director,
advertising agency owner, marketing consultant, father of four, avid
hiker and climber and now semi-retired, lives in Kitsap County.
Don Kraft started his business career the day he graduated from the UW by opening a one-man advertising agency in Seattle's University District. Through various mergers and acquisitions, he was an agency CEO for the next 45 years.
He was president of Kraft Advertising from 1948 until its merger with Honig-Cooper in 1954. He was a vice president of Honig-Cooper until its Seattle office was acquired and became Kraft, Smith & Ehrig in 1959. He was president of that agency until it merged and became Evans/Kraft in 1984. At the time of his retirement in 1993, he was chairman of the parent company, then called EvansGroup.
Since his formal retirement, Kraft has been engaged in consulting and community work and was chairman emeritus of EvansGroup (now Publicis of the West.) He has been involved as board member and consultant with a number of Northwest companies.
Hal Newsom didn't grow up in the Northwest. He wishes he were a native but he might never have met his wife. The two of them worked at Old Faithful the summer of 1950, and it was through Peggy that he learned that Seattle was the greatest place in the world. Hal says, "We fell in love by the second date."
Hal graduated from Beloit with a degree in Economics and high-tailed it to Seattle. He made the rounds of advertising agencies but was turned down at every stop. The advice that seemed to be universal was a graduate from the UW Journalism School had a leg up. He delayed his service obligation and enrolled at the UW where Peggy was a junior. Here he honed his skills in writing, as sports editor of the school Daily and built his first advertising campaign with the introduction of a new restaurant, The Burgermaster.
Hal entered the US Army as a private destined for the OCS School at Fort Benning, Georgia, but not before 16 weeks of basic training followed by leadership school. He and Peggy were engaged and later married in July, 1953.
When he returned to Seattle in 1955 after his tour with Uncle Sam, he began his search for an advertising job in Seattle. Bud Noren, advertising manager of SAFECO, took a risk and hired the "green pea" transplant.
Dan Gerber, at Cole and Weber, saw some potential in Newsom and hired him in 1958. When the Condon Company was purchased by Cole and Weber, Hal met Hal Dixon and the two hit it off right away. Soon they became known as the "Two Hals".
He retired in 1989 and immediately took to the mountains, hiking, running and spending time with his family. In 1995 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and plunged into activities related to the disease. He helped found the Northwest Parkinson's Disease Foundation which developed the Booth Gardner Parkinson's Care Center at Evergreen Hospital. He also wrote a book to help newly diagnosed Parkinson's people. In 2008 he published a book titled Yellowstone Summer, now available at bookstores.
Writer/Creative Director Dick Paetzke has created advertising for nearly 400 consumer, industrial, and institutional advertising clients, from Coca Cola to General Foods to Microsoft to the late U.S. Senator Henry Jackson's campaigns for the U.S. Senate and the Presidency of the United States.
Dick served McCann-Erickson, Inc. for 19 years as C/D and Seattle office G/M. Dick was also Director of Strategic Planning and Executive Creative Director for Seattle's Evans Group before opening his own creative services firm in 1991. His clients are widely diverse and include leading design firms and ad agencies; financial institutions; technology companies; research organizations; universities; industrial, medical and agricultural producers; outdoor recreation facilities; retail and service businesses.