Rene Henry, who covered sports for UPI while still in high school, later taking sports PR posts at two colleges, has recounted his journey through 21 places of employment from 1953 to the present.

My Wonderful Life, his tenth book, covers ups and downs in agency, academic and corporate jobs.

My Wonderful Life

The bio has valuable lessons for those planning PR careers as well as those who are in the industry. He went where the jobs were and accounts were, living in 11 different cities.

Writing talent and ability to work with others stand out as key ingredients of Henry’s successful career track. He also does not believe in retirement, early or late, since he was born in 1933.

Three of his biggest and longest-lasting posts were VP and director of the Los Angeles office of Edelman from 1967-70; executive director of university relations, Texas A&M University, 1991-96, and director of communications, Environmental Protection Agency, Philadelphia, 1996-2001.

Battled Columbia Journalism Review

Fifteen pages are devoted to his battle to get the Columbia Journalism Review to redact charges that client Jeff Prosser of Innovative Communications Corp., Virgin Islands, was a “phone-sex operator.”

CJR never apologized for the report but removed all references to it on its website after a battle of several years. Prosser, whose company had telecom and other media properties, purchased a telecom in Belize, formerly British Honduras, a country on the East coast of Central America. But ICC’s assets were then illegally seized by the Belize government and ICC went bankrupt.

Henry’s experience is that while the federal government says its requests for proposals are “open for bid by any qualified company,” the jobs actually go “almost only to an elite group of inside-the-beltway contractors.”

He worked with Joe Honick of GMA International and others on a job advertised by the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development that would explain to the housing industry Modular Integrated Utility Systems, which concerns co-generation of energy using various sources.

He bid on another government contract but a “handful of contractors who had a solid lock in Sacramento for California contracts” gave the job to ICPR. Henry had been a co-founder of the firm in 1975 but left it in 1980.

Majored in Economics

Following graduation in 1954 from the College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Va., where he majored in economics, and his jobs at that college and West Virginia University, Henry worked at Flournoy & Gibbs, Toledo; Lennen & Newell, San Francisco; Edelman, Los Angeles; Allan, Ingersoll, Segal & Henry, Beverly Hills; ICPR, and then in his own from 1980-86.

Organize for success is his advice.

A chapter is devoted to career tips for those entering PR.

“You can learn a great deal from mentors that you will never learn in college,” is his first piece of advice.

Organizational skills are second on his list. “Unfortunately, too many do not practice self-discipline and the words are not part of their vocabulary,” he writes.

“Know how you spend your time and keep good records and use systems that work best for you,” he adds.

Return Calls!

He believes that all incoming and outgoing calls should be logged, retaining time, subject covered and contact points.

Henry’s policy was to return every phone call and answer every letter, memo, fax and email. He is against having someone screen calls, a current common practice in corporate, institutional and agency life. He gave all his contact points to media and was available to most of them 24/7.

Today's PR pros need to improve their writing skills, says Henry, who advises a liberal arts education for those intending to go into PR or journalism. PR people need to study the AP Stylebook since it is widely followed and also need to know how to research topics on the web. "People call me and ask questions when the answers are right there on the web," he says. Failure to return phone calls, emails, or letters is just plain "rudeness," in his view. "Good, old-fashioned common courtesy is what is needed," he says.

Public servants especially should pick up their own phones and answer their own emails, he feels.

For 13 years he was married to Gillian Thompson of Stony Brook. Their two children, Deborah and Bruce, have had successful business careers, he writes.