The Lives They Lived
Every year at this time, the New York Times Sunday magazine features a beautifully designed and written piece saying toodle-oo to some interesting people we lost in the previous year. So if it’s okay with you, Slip Mahoney, I’m gonna throw in a few of my own—three “ad guys” we said farewell to in 2024.
The first one, I knew well. Jack Connors, founder of the great Boston ad agency Hill, Holliday, Connors, and Cosmopulos, was a friend and role model to me for 44 years. We lost him on July 23.
The second one, I wish I knew better. James Garvey was the son of my good buddy John Garvey, who runs Garvey Communications, the Springfield ad agency where James was Vice President. The kid approached advertising with a sense of fun, grit, and gusto. We lost James on November 6.
The last one, I didn’t know at all. Mary Wells Lawrence was the founding President of the New York ad agency Wells, Rich, and Greene. She was the first female CEO of a company on the New York Stock Exchange. The agency developed the famous “Plop-Plop-Fizz-Fizz” and I Heart New York campaigns, among many others. She died on May 11.
To wrap it up, I spotted this blurb in an interview Jack did in Boston Magazine. When asked how he wanted to be remembered, he said, “I used to walk Forest Hills cemetery in Boston. So many influential people are buried there. It’s beautiful. I walk there all the time. But when I walk through the cemetery I look at those gravestones. There’s this one guy named Bumpus and on his gravestone it says, ‘He went about doing good.’ I said to my wife, that’s how I want to be remembered.”
You know what? Jack, James, and Mary all lived up to good old Bumpus’s inscription on the stone. Happy new year.
Keep your dukes up.
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