Ad Broad, oldest working writer in advertising

My blogs

Gender	Female
Industry	Advertising
Occupation	copywriter/cd
Location	new york, new york, United States
Introduction	I started in the business in 1977, working for a guy who could have walked off the set of Mad Men. He had a glass eye to replace one he'd lost in the War (Korea) and because of this, I hated looking at him. Not because I was freaked by the fake eye, but because it looked real and I couldn't remember which eye was which and each time our eyes met I worried I was tracking the wrong one. Like most women in those days, I started out as a secretary. The halls of advertising were clogged with secretaries, everybody had one, even some secretaries. Eventually, I was promoted to copywriter at what was arguably the best shop on the planet. I pitied freelancers brought in to work on projects no one else wanted, people aged out of the business, who had missed landing a spot on the corporate food chain. Then, I got pregnant: a condition so unusual for creatives in that era, my boss reacted by granting six months paid leave. But the day before I was to go back to work, the sitter dropped my baby on her head. The kid was OK, but I was so shaken that I became an ad-agency migrant worker like the freelancers I'd pitied--who in roaring 80s were laughing all the way to pre-ATM lines at the bank.