By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
NOV. 12, 2019 | It’s a basic tenet of business. Having a good public relations counsel is not a cost; it is an investment in your future.
A really good PR person died the other day, living to the ripe old age of 92. He was William (Bill) Bates, who retired in Atlanta after an illustrious career.
We’ve used him for years as an example when talking to students and professionals of what a good public relations person does. A good PR person serves both his clients and his contacts among the media and in other areas, without questioning.
For instance, once when publishing a weekly in South Georgia, I needed to talk to Bill Veross, who was president of Interstate Paper Company in Riceboro, on the Georgia coast, and a person I knew. A contingent of my newspaper readers worked at that pulp mill, and though I don’t remember why I needed to talk to him, Veross was the only person who could answer that question. On calling the mill, his secretary would not put me through to him.
Bates
Knowing Bill Bates had Interstate as a client, I put in a call to Bill. When I told him I needed to talk to Veross, and asked if he could get through to him, Bates did not ask me why I wanted to talk to him, nor what I wanted. He simply said, “I’ll get back to you today.” Realize that it was our press day, and I was on an immediate deadline.
It might have been ten minutes later that Veross was calling me. He had not been at the mill, but was in a meeting in Miami. In five minutes, I had the information I wanted, thanks to a good public relations man.
Bates was one of the greatest generation. After high school in Scott (Johnson County in southeast Georgia), he served in the Pacific during World War II as a signalman on a destroyer. He then attended the Henry W. Grady School of Journalism University of Georgia, graduating in 1949 magna cum laude and the class valedictorian. His college career foretold his future leadership, being Phi Beta Kappa scholar, editor of The Red and Black, and while a student a contributor to The Georgia Review. He was a member of the Gridiron Secret Society.
Newspapers were his next step, when he became a reporter for United Press in Atlanta, and later in Washington, D.C. where he covered the McCarthy hearings. In 1956 he came back to Georgia, as the political editor of The Atlanta Constitution.
He returned to Washington as Senator Richard Russell’s first press secretary.
Later he went into public relations, with the Atlanta office of the New York firm of Bell and Stanton, which eventually became Manning Selvage and Lee, where he was vice president and director, where I first knew him. That’s about the time I contacted him needing some help. Eventually he set up his own PR firm, then took leave to return to Washington as press secretary of the Senate Agriculture Committee, which was chaired then by Sen. Herman Talmadge of Georgia. He returned once again to Atlanta was where he put in another 20 years in public relations.
In retirement he was passionate about forest conservation, buying more than 20 tracts in four counties in Southeast Georgia, through his firm, Bates Timberlands LLLP, a family partnership and legacy.
William M. Bates: 1926-2019: May you rest in peace.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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