Pressure Makes Diamonds: Becoming the Woman I Pretended to Be by Graves Valerie

Author:Graves, Valerie [Graves, Valerie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2016-10-31T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Big Pimpin’ in the Big Apple

Brian’s high school graduation also commenced a new chapter in my own life. The combination of Alvin’s natural abilities and his Ivy League journalism training had helped him progress quickly at the Oakland Press , reporting on the county courts. My husband’s brilliant grasp of legal concepts had even led a prominent African American attorney to offer to foot the bill if Alvin wished to attend law school. By that time, he had firmly decided on journalism as a career, but the boundaries of small-market journalism were beginning to constrain his talents.

Driving back to Detroit after settling Brian at Wilberforce University in Ohio (a historically black college where we hoped he would discover some interests other than sports), we both confessed a sense of not being done with New York City. Always having a dream to work toward had become essential to my happiness, and success in Detroit rekindled my desire to find accomplishment on the larger stage of New York. Remembering the sight of my gregarious son as we left him on campus, turning to a total stranger and saying, “How ya doing, man? My name is Brian,” I had the feeling that it would be safe to move back to the East Coast. For two hundred miles, Alvin and I spun a fantasy of shedding cars and square footage in order to afford New York and Brian’s college tuition at the same time.

Shortly after that conversation, we attended a journalism job fair at Howard University, where Alvin focused on talking to New York papers. Almost like magic, the general manager of UniWorld began seriously courting me. During our year in New York, UniWorld had hired me for a lucrative freelance job that took the sting out of our failed first attempt to work together. Not only had they paid me handsomely, but the campaign, for AT&T, consisted of high-profile, full-color, double-page magazine ads (called “four-color spreads” in agency lingo). The ads featured towering African American artists like Harlem photographer James Van Der Zee and Arthur Mitchell, founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. The visual impact of those beautiful spreads in magazines like Ebony and Essence was staggering.

Byron Lewis had hired me to write the campaign because he couldn’t inspire his staff to explore photography and dance—both of which AT&T sponsored—as metaphors for communication. For me, product of dance school recitals, producer of The Little Rascals –style backyard talent shows and Personality Week at Jefferson Junior High, any situation that involved an artist and an audience was as much a conversation as a telephone call. Once I had executed Byron Lewis’s vision, he was more determined than ever to recruit me. He directed his general manager to contact me with a job offer once a month. Now, in 1985, she approached me at a time of amazing synchronicity. Over an elegant dinner at Le Cirque on Manhattan’s East Side, Byron Lewis displayed considerable charm and charisma as he smilingly delivered a pitch I could not resist.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.