Career Capstone

After retiring, I joined S&C, a local minority- and women-owned public relations and advertising firm. I handled commercial clients and the firm’s expanding government portfolio. Those first few months were exciting: I helped co-owner Andres Lagueruela prepare to serve as a Texas delegate to the White House Conference on Small Business, and we set up the company’s desktop computers and affiliate communications. At the same time, the firm was beginning work on a new contract with the Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence.

Only a few months later, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission sealed the abolishment of the San Antonio Air Logistics Center and, effectively, the closure of Kelly AFB. The future of my spouse’s career hung in the balance. We were fulfilling our annual ritual of watching the PBS “A Capitol Fourth” on Independence Day when Shirley asked, “How would you like to see it in person?”

She had been accepted for a career-broadening position on the Air Staff, with the Deputy Chief of Staff for Installations and Logistics. Upon my return to work, I informed owner Earline Lagueruela that I would have to resign. After my wife followed my career for three decades, it was time for me to follow her. Earline responded, “No, that’s great! We always wanted a presence in Washington. Stay with the company and telework.”

For the first time, we experienced an upgrade from a standard military permanent change of station to the enhanced civil service model. I used my knowledge of the Pentagon to show her the features and new office location the weekend before she reported. We settled into a new townhome near Alexandria and I established my remote office. I worked primarily on developing community relations plans and supportive products for the closed Wurtsmith and K. I. Sawyer air bases in Michigan, as well as environmental restoration programs at Pope AFB, North Carolina, and Mountain Home AFB, Idaho. Other accounts included developing web page content for the Navy at the Washington Navy Yard and support activities at Anacostia.

When my work was nearing completion on the closed bases, my employment days with the San Antonio firm were drawing down. The firm had hired retired Lt. Col. Bob Brus for the San Antonio office, and retired Col. George Titus had the most difficult and visible responsibility, Lowry AFB, Colorado. They were more than capable of finishing the remaining contract work.

Looking ahead, I responded to a federal job posting for a public affairs specialist at the U.S. Census Bureau. John Reinders, a retired chief master sergeant, was heading environmental restoration public affairs for the National Guard Bureau, and pointed me to another minority-owned small business in Hyattsville, Maryland, Guild Communications. With no interruption, I continued doing the same work from home, with frequent trips to the office across the Potomac.

Working in a workaholic town, our social life was limited. I purchased a civilian tuxedo and played a supporting spouse role at dinings-in and dinings-out. At a Christmas party on General’s Row at Bolling AFB, I discussed my experience as a radio disc jockey with Lt. Gen. George Babbitt, who had a rock music background as an early member of the Ventures. I conversed with Maj. Gen. Marcie Harris, for whom Shirley occasionally served as executive officer. I played the waiting spouse when Shirley had temporary duty assignments, usually involving nuclear facilities but including the grueling officers’ “bomb making” course at hot Beale AFB.

There was only one traffic light between our home and the premier commissary and Class VI store at Fort Belvoir. I resumed my on-again, off-again relationships with the officers’ club, relishing Friday night all-you-can-consume king crab legs.

Life was good. My work life was about to get better.

The Census Bureau

The U.S. Census Bureau called about the job opening they advertised eight months earlier. In pure civilian bureaucratic form, they were finally getting around to filling two GS-9/11/12 positions. I was interviewed and only a few days later notified I was selected, along with retired Army Maj. Mark Tolbert III, whose last assignment had been in the service’s public affairs office in New York City. Both the company owner, Eugene Orr, and I cried when I offered my resignation. I developed great affection for small, women-owned and minority-owned communications companies and used them in future work.

Mark and I quickly began to learn a new culture and adapt to an unfamiliar situation: an extremely well-staffed PA office, with nearly 50 people. Most of them had “cross-trained” into the public information office from other functions in the bureau, and most were mature adults who would be turning 50 years old about the same time as me. Mark and I got a valuable orientation when we hosted Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Doig for a weeklong immersion in census programs, surveys and data. He was en route to an academic position at Arizona State University and was a pioneer in what became known as “computer-assisted reporting.”

My first major assignment, only weeks after my hire, would set the tone for my work over the next 10 years: the news release, press kits and press conference to release the nation’s official poverty rate and health insurance coverage. As I was setting up in the Hohman Lounge at the venerable National Press Club, I was approached by a diminutive, meek reporter who introduced himself as Robert Pear of the New York Times. That meek appearance and soft voice belied a lion of a reporter, feared by many other government agencies, but Robert and I would talk almost weekly for the rest of my tenure at the bureau.

The announcement itself was treated as an economic indicator: data that moves the stock market. A strict, 10 a.m. release. At about 9:45 a.m., a handful of White House interns approached us and requested several press kits. As we began the news conference, President Clinton appeared in the Rose Garden at 10:02 to announce the “good news” from the report.

It wasn’t Colonel O’Brien’s hardball, but I was definitely in the big leagues.

The ensuing months and years saw expanded responsibilities and a myriad of activities, excerpts of which I chronicle here. There were focus groups, news conferences, exhibits, presentations and rollouts throughout the country. Liaisons with journalist groups and professional organizations. But researching and developing news releases were my primary job and the source of most of my satisfaction over the years. Each release improved by a full-time staff editor. Each sentence I wrote subject to statistical testing. Each product subject to the whims of political appointees far above my pay grade, but wise enough not to imperil the excellent credibility the Census Bureau enshrined with reporters and media producers.

Doing the work I loved. Public Affairs. No more competitions for promotion or burdens of a manager.