Dorothy Brush "Random Thoughts" Published July 10, 2002

Mandy back at it again

"Nashville darling begins work on a new album" introduced a story in the entertainment section of the Nashville Tennessean on June 28. The full page story featured a picture of Crossville's darling, Mandy Barnett. In the interview Mandy spoke of the influence her grandmother, mother and father had on the music she enjoys the most. She has just signed with Manhattan Records, a subsidiary of Capitol, and the record she plans to make in Los Angeles this fall will be filled with sad torch-style songs.

Another woman, "Rosie the Riveter," has been a national darling for 60 years. Early in World War II the poster appeared showing Rosie wearing a red and white bandana over her hair and flexing her arm muscles to prove women were working to help the war effort. The caption read "We Can Do It."

The model was only 17 and for one week in 1942 she worked in a Michigan factory pressing metal. A wire service photographer snapped her picture and she forgot all about it. She married, had six children and had no idea she was Rosie. It was not until 1984 after a number of people kept telling her she looked like the poster that she took time to look into it. Indeed it was her, Geraldine Hoff Doyle of Lansing, MI. Last month the Michigan State Senate honored her. She said, "It's sad I didn't know it was me sooner, but maybe it's a good thing. I couldn't have handled all the excitement then."

"Rosie the Riveter" was created by the Ad Council, an organization which has impacted our society with positive and powerful messages for 60 years. Under the Ad Council umbrella, volunteers from advertising firms, the media and agencies donate their time and energy to create messages that stir citizens to act. They have the support and resources of the corporate world also.

It all started in the dark days of late 1941, when the major trade associations of the advertising world came together to discuss the survival of their industry. Advertising was very low in the public's esteem. A longtime advertising executive laid out his vision of what the business should be doing. He thundered, "It ought to create understanding and reduce friction. It ought to wipe out diseases. It ought to be the servant of music, art, of literature and of all the forces of righteousness, even more than it is."

That talk galvanized the thinking and committees were formed to act. The next month Pearl Harbor was bombed and the President turned to these same people to rally Americans to win World War II. Christened the War Advertising Council by Washington, within months the country embraced the slogans they introduced: "Rosie the Riveter," "Buy War Bonds," "Loose Lips Sink Ships," "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."

In 1944 Smokey Bear's message that "Only you can prevent forest fires" became familiar and then at war's end the Ad Council began work with the National Safety Council. In 1945 the first president of the council said, "Business has learned that the best public relations come through public service."

Over the last 60 years they have targeted issues the public needed to be aware of. For the United Negro College Fund, "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste," "The Toughest Job You'll Ever Love" for the Peace Corps, and who could forget the "Crying Indian." The list goes on and on, children's issues, drug and alcohol abuse, AIDS, and Vince and Larry, the crash-test dummies proving Americans should buckle up. The Ad Council has really made a difference in America's life through their public service advertising.

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Dorothy Copus Brush is a Fairfield Glade resident and Crossville Chronicle staffwriter whose column is published each Wednesday.