will find these stories of as much interest in their reading as I have had in their telling.
In an effort of this magnitude and over a span of some 40 years, the author has accumulated a long list of large debts to many persons, many of whom are not here to receive my expressions of gratitude. To all who made this book possible, I owe a heartfelt debt of gratitude that these acknowledgments can only partially repay.
My first acknowledgment must go to Harold Burson, founder/chairman of the giant Burson-Marsteller, Inc. firm. Harold had bugged me several times in recent years about getting on with the history of public relations that I had started gathering material for in the mid-1950s. Finally, in early 1990, on a trip to Atlanta, he twisted my arm and brought me back to the typewriter, which resulted in this manuscript. He provided substantial research assistance, wise counsel, and support all the way.
Next I want to acknowledge the thorough, painstaking research that Dr. Karen Miller, then a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin, did for me over an 18-month period in the papers of John W. Hill and Earl Newsom, and for the research of secondary sources she did for the Whitaker and Baxter chapter.
I am also deeply grateful to the library staffs of the University of Georgia and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. University of Georgia librarian William Gray Potter provided me with a convenient home and his congenial staff has been most helpful. The State Historical Society's keeper of the archives, Harry Miller, bent the rules all out of shape to make my work easier. Officials of the Society, which is my sentimental home, lent encouragement and help over these 40 years.
A sweeping salute goes to Mrs. Sandra Gary, who typed the final manuscript.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to Craig Lewis, vice chairman of Ogilvy Adams & Rinehart, New York City, who was the last one to turn off the lights in the Earl Newsom Company, and John R. "Jack" Newsom for their confidence in making Earl Newsom's papers available to me for this book, well ahead of their 1998 time seal on the papers.
In virtually every chapter, I had the assistance and advice of persons knowledgeable on the subject or the research of graduate students. I think it best to acknowledge this debt chapter by chapter:
Chapter 1. James A. Nafziger and Robert L. Bishop (both of whom are now professors), who assisted with my research in their graduate school days in the 1950s.
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