One day he saw a blind ad for a public relations job in the Raleigh News & Observer. It was signed Box 731, which was located in Raleigh’s historic Century Station. Instead of mailing in his application, he hand-delivered his response to the postmaster in a colored envelope to make it stand out, then stationed himself in front of the box the next morning to wait for the person who came to pick up the mail.
Eventually a man came in to open the box, and my father eased over to introduce himself, pointed to the pink (sometimes he said it was blue) envelope, and asked if the owner of the box would kindly read his application first. The man turned out to be H.B. (Red) Trader, the secretary to Uria Benton Blalock, head of the Farmers Cooperative Exchange as well as the North Carolina Cotton Growers Association, one of the largest cotton marketing associations in the South.
Before the day was out, my father was able to call on his earlier contacts from the Governor’s Office to the president of NC State to ask them to make calls on his behalf. Before the sun went down, Blalock had received telephone calls endorsing him from O. Max Gardner, governor of North Carolina; Josepheus Daniels, publisher of the News & Observer; John Park, publisher of the Raleigh Times; the NC State president; and three other influential local men. This made it difficult for Blalock to avoid asking my father to meet with him. As my father later told an interviewer, “My letter got a favorable response. Anticipating that it would, I had bought myself a white cotton suit and showed up for the interview wearing it.”
The job was director of public relations, which involved editing and publishing a newsletter, the Carolina Cooperator, for co-op members, and my father felt it was a perfect match. But the job offer was not immediately forthcoming.
At their meeting, Blalock said, “Look at all these letters. I’ve got letters from people with a lot more experience than you have. I’m going to hire another candidate, but I wanted to tell you that I was impressed by your initiative. If you keep going like this, maybe one of these days you’ll amount to something.” My father replied that he wanted to amount to something then, and Blalock did not immediately turn him down.
Instead, he took my father, who was still a student, along with him on a business trip to Kannapolis, NC. It was hot in Blalock’s Lincoln limousine, and they would occasionally stop for a cold drink along the way. My father said Blalock would ask him to call the office and tell them to sell so many pounds of cotton, or buy so many. He’d write it all down and call it in, but thought it was one hell of a poor company to work for if they were spending money buying futures on this and that, with a fellow like him telling them what to buy. My father soon guessed, however, that Blalock was just finding out how many mistakes he would make. A few days later, Blalock called my father into his office to repeat the bad news. He told him, “You’re a pretty smart and resourceful young man, but you’re too young. You ought to stay in touch, and after you learn something about journalism maybe we’ll have a place for you.”
But my father didn’t give up. He told Blalock he’d saved some money and said, “I know I can do this job. I’ll bring my own typewriter if you’ll give me a place to put it and a lamp. You don’t even have to give me an office. And I’ll work for free for three months. If you don’t ask me to stay, I’ll come by and thank you for the experience I got and go on my way.” “We’re a large organization and can’t do that,” Blalock told him. But then he thought for a moment and asked my father what he figured the job should pay. My father replied, “I think it’s worth two hundred and fifty dollars a month.”
To which Blalock said, “You’re the damnedest young fellow I have ever seen. I’ll give you a hundred dollars a month.” My father responded, “You talked me into it.”
Thus began my father’s first business career, thirty days before his graduation. When he reported for work, his direct boss at Carolina Cotton was M.G. “Manley” Mann. My father credits him as one of the two people who gave him a role model for success, the other being his future partner Duncan Hines, who was internationally famous as an arbiter of taste. A tough taskmaster, Mann was another workaholic who expected work to be on time and done right. My father said Mann was good at business, but he liked him because he said he was also a dreamer, and that was something they both had in common. My father always felt it was OK to have dreams, as long as you were able to work hard enough to put a foundation under them. And he was good at that.
As director of public relations, my father stayed with the Cotton Association for eleven years in public relations, advertising and speech writing. He impressed his employees and their growing number of customers with his flair for creative editing and his skills in public relations and sales promotion. There was a lot of money in cotton in those days, and one of the more remarkable things he did was figure out a way to enhance the public image of cotton garments. As the traditional fabric of work clothing, being tough and comfortable, it was favored by the working class, and looked down upon by the socially elite and those who wanted to be. My father figured that if he could change that image he could substantially broaden the market.
He came up with the idea of holding Cotton Balls, highly publicized statewide affairs, which included parades and formal dances attended by the daughters of some of North Carolina’s most prominent families. The promotion included “Maids of Cotton,” young women dressed in all-cotton gowns. Park arranged for the manufacture of special gowns for the women and tuxedos for their escorts, and all in attendance wore cotton.
Including the lady who would become my mother, Dorothy Goodwin Dent.