Mary Coyne and Kathy Cornett

00:00 321 Kathy

00:06 Hi, my name is Kathy Cornett. I'm 73 years old today is Thursday, November 19th. 2020. I'm in Canyon, Texas, which is where I live and my interview work. Today is Mary Coyne. I know Mary because we work together for a long long time, but she's not as old as I am. So don't worry about that.

00:33 Thanks, and I'm Mary Coyne and I'm 62 years old. Today is Thursday, November 19th, 2020 and I'm in Amarillo, Texas, which is only about Seventeen miles away from cat. And Kathy Cornett is my conversation partner and Kathy and I work together for some 25 26 years in the advertising business. So I'm looking forward to this conversation with Kathy. So let's get started Kathy. You better pretty fascinating life. And I think of you as being a person that's really insightful about human behavior. And you're one of the most creative people that I know but you've typically talked up your life to lot and that may be an element surrounding the time when you were born. So tell us about that.

01:27 Well, I'll just 425 what you said about luck because I really do think luck plays a big part for me and you know other people might interpret it as something else. But anyway, so I was born in El Paso Texas in the hospital. And at the time I was born there was this dysentery outbreak in that hospital in in the nursery and my mom dying as a real serious thing. This was 1947.

02:08 And so she just went into the administrator or whoever and said, you know, I'm taking my baby out of this Nursery because I don't want my baby and she met some resistance and and I think really held her ground and took me home and it was one of her favorite stories, but it's also one of my favorite stories because it it's part of what encouraged me to stick up for myself, but she stuck up for herself in that situation. So I think that was good luck on my pushy.

02:45 So there you were in that border Town El Paso and growing up soaked in the forties and fifties and when you were in kindergarten you were riding the bus to school and was just at a school bus or a poor city bus 4 miles from the kindergarten building in the school building and the family everybody else would leave my brother was two years older than me. So he already went to a different school and he was gone. So by myself stand out on the front step catch the city bus ride up to the school get in the school spent a full day. Get back on that bus come home and cross Highway 54 2.

03:45 Back to my house and you know, I have to think that that's an interesting experience not very many kids even then had to do that. But I'm glad that happened that way because I think it gave me a sense of responsibility of sense of Freedom. One of my big treats was my mom will give me a little extra money night while I was waiting on the bus to come home. There's a little convenience store right across from the school and I could go buy something for myself to eat or drink or whatever on the bus on the way home, but stepped up public transportation experience taught me a lot when I look back on it at the time. I thought well, you know this whatever they nothing peculiar to my own house and I would show my key to the other kids in the class.

04:45 So you are the mouths of responsibilities at age 5 in and carried over into a lot of what you were at your school work. So let's talk a little bit about being in grade school. And in the in the fifth grade you had a music teacher. Mrs. Gillette, right?

05:08 Well, yes, she was actually miss Gillette, but that's okay. You didn't know her amazed that you know, as I've moved up to be 10 years old. I have to tell you my brother described me and called me mrs. Hitler. She called he called me because I was a little bossy. So if we talked about what happened when I was in 5th grade school, but she was my homeroom teacher and she was responsible for certain course work for her class.

05:48 And one day we were in class and she said as she did many times I got to go on teaching music class somewhere else. So you guys work on this stuff that I'm leaving with you and so I was there in the class and whenever she left the room the class just went haywire all the time. They could just go on stuff and doing whatever 10 year old kids do and I just couldn't stay charged. So I would just take charge and I'll go get little want to sit down and get so-and-so to do stop doing whatever and this other woman walked in one day and I didn't know who she was but she seems okay to me so she stood there and watched us for a while and she left it turned out. She was a staffer for the school system, and she happened to have been a classmate of my father's in high school.

06:44 And I don't know how she knew my name. But anyway, she called him at work and said I visited your daughter's class this afternoon. I'm going to move her to a different white house because she deserves a better circumstance for learning.

06:59 Andi'm so that was bad. I moved in from the poor kids class to the rich kids class, which was an interesting transition because back then and maybe even now the best teachers. The best students and usually it was just had whatever they had put them in better stead. They had books and parents who cared and whatever that was about and so when I moved in because I was used to being in charge and then I was in that new class. I wasn't in charge but it's okay because I'm really glad that happened that way. I don't know what my password have been if that lady hadn't shown up that day and then what she did

07:46 So every other other folks in your school Ted found out that you had something special I think in and talk to us a little bit about that.

08:01 Oh, well as we move as I move from one class to the next it took a couple days for administrative leave about to happen. So we're all on the playground at recess and the girls in the class where I was moving to

08:20 We're talkin about me and I could tell that they were whispering and pointing and saying is that her is that that girl that's coming and I don't know set me apart from them from day one and even been on but I think it's okay cuz I've managed to overcome whatever that feeling was that well, maybe I don't belong there which maybe is Hawaii

08:48 Wire work really hard to try to do things, right?

08:51 So the teachers always chose you for their demonstration sessions and we and when the teachers had him service and that sort of thing. What about that? Yeah, that's that's tells me that maybe it came out. All right, because once I got out of there if I moved up to High School junior high and high school, they're always special session things that went on demonstrations that the administration of a school do or orange a given subject areas of chemistry teacher would show something whatever and and teachers from all around the system would come and observe these things were happening and how to teach this or that and so one time in junior high.

09:47 Teacher asked me to please come and be part of the demonstration of a projecting microscope. Now. I understand this is a long time ago and that was all brand new technology and he had it there and showed it to me and I said yeah sure glad to do that. So so she had a pain in her back yard, and it was always coming and it always has little things flying in it and swimming in it. So I thought I'd take a jar and get a jar of that water and I have something to demonstrate on this projecting microscope because they just have static slides there to show the bugs are crawling all around and you can see I'm in the scratch. So the teachers show up.

10:39 And it's my job to explain to him how it works and so forth and and and I had a script in my head. I don't know why it there but I said to them now teaching a class with just instruments if it really helps you because you don't know when the kids are looking through their own microscope what they're saying and if they're staying the right thing and you can do whatever they were and this is really help you and your class needed to happen until a teacher once said to the other. Well, I wish it was when I get one of those and I said well great. So, I don't know why why I knew to say all that but it worked out. Well, that's my teacher told me I did a good job.

11:40 Well you were you were a boss in training way back then right? So, you know, I've always thought of you as something of a Mystic you always kind of knew what was going to happen before it happened. And in your new things that nobody has told you but you just somehow knew them and I always wondered if that maybe that was partly because of your grandmother.

12:14 Well, it's entirely possible my grandmother in, South Dakota.

12:23 Believed in a lot of interesting things. I think she was a Christian, but I'm not sure she did go to church but when we were there my brother and I would be there all summer long and we will watch her sitting at this big table that she had and there were these books and charts and jewels and stuff on on that table and she was studying and I asked her. What are you doing here? What what is this? And she said well, I'm learning so that I can develop my higher powers. And so, you know, I just drank it in cuz I'm a kid. That's my grandma telling me this stuff and what she was doing was putting her finger hurt her pointer finger and middle finger together both hands.

13:22 To draw out some of these powers from Forever in the sky or whatever they were coming from and she would send messages and she would tell us stories about experiences. She had them and she said she was in the hospital one time recovering from surgery and she was kind of delirious coming out of the anesthesia, but the doctors were all around the bed and she had of the peace treaty for World War II and describe who's around the table and what are they signing and end this was a thing that wasn't released until of the couple months later. It's finding that happened quietly and I never knew that she would ask you studied all the stuff. She put those those three fingers that I described before she put them together and summoned her powers and send these messages and so forth.

14:22 Wish you were much older and I was much older by then. She said to tell you this achieved such a level in this learning that when I die, I'll be able to come back and present myself to certain people that I want to do that for and you're one of those people so be prepared if if I come back and you see me don't tell anybody that you see me because they'll think you're not right and I have never seen her makes you wonder she never has shown up, but I think that whole experience with her mystical magical stuff that she did sort of opened up some some compartments in my brain that where you know,

15:22 It comes along but on the other hand, maybe we should be very skeptical of what comes along so, I don't know.

15:34 It sounds like it. So your brother called you little what Miss Hitler or limit learn so he kind of gave you a hard time right it insulted you from time to time.

15:55 Well, that's sort of a grand an insult calling in his Hitler and and mean as it was I just knew that he meant to be mean and so it was but around for something. I don't remember he was criticizing me for something. I did or said I don't know and the family dinner table which is rare these days but and we talked about the events of the day and he was telling something and and and pans me and my dad stopped and explain to him that siblings should be nice to each other and your sister is trying to express yourself or whatever whatever it was. I was saying or doing

16:55 It's Timmy like that.

17:09 You know, sometimes it's the small things that really stick with you and and it's interesting this as one of those things that exact kind of validation was one of the things that made you probably made you part of what part part of why you ended up being the kind of person that you are in the kind of awesome that you were one of my favorite stories that you have is about how you met your husband and how your courtship and how you got married and how long have you and Steve been married?

17:47 You know, it's funny you ask in May of this year will be married 50 years 50 years.

17:58 It's even more remarkable given how it all got started. Yes, and I'll tell you that story. I was a journalism major at UTEP and he was a journalism major. It was Texas State University and we went to San Antonio each in our own way to this convention College journalism convention, and it's the last night of the convention and the others thousand kids are big fit convention and I'm in the elevator on the way up to my room to a packing and leave the next day. He gets on the elevator and we tried to force together and he says hi. My name's Steve and I say hi. My name is Kathy and he says

18:42 Next year when the conventions in El Paso, can I call you and I said, oh, yeah sure that would be fine. And that was the end of that and I never even thought of it. I mean I just didn't think about that a year goes by by then. I had graduated I had a job. I was not in school and he called me he found my number somehow and he called me and he said do you remember me?

19:11 And I said sure but I didn't really know why not you said well as conventions going on here, would you come out and meet me? So I go out there to the big party. It's the big final night dance.

19:31 Am I go in the room and everybody's having a good time and I find my kids cuz I didn't remember this guy didn't know who I was looking for. And I found the year before I said, do you know where was Texas kids are y'all there over there in the arm reaches out and grabs me and it stay because I've been waiting here all night again. So that was the first time and I'll give you the short version of this long story, but we saw each other a total of 6 * 6 * never lived in the same town.

20:14 And got married and when I told my father that we're going to get married.

20:19 And this this six times with over the course of 18 on.

20:23 I told my father that I was going to marry this guy. He said who is this guy? I said well as this guy that I met on the elevator and anywhere else. The detail of that but he did ask me. Why are you marrying him? What is it? You love about him that makes you think this is going to work and I said because when we are together and we had seen each other three times, maybe maybe self, but he said I told my dad because he brings out the best in me and I have to say that really was the true because it really does but you know, what are the odds that 50 years later would be together meeting in an earring is total strangers and boy, he's all I could cook like his mama didn't look like my mom there were all these things to learn about each other and maybe that's you know, we're only just now

21:23 Each other

21:25 Well, it all worked out, right?

21:31 You don't want these.

21:40 So so you can you all got married and soon after you move to to this area Amarillo and Canyon right? Right. That's right. And you know, we were just fresh college graduates and needed money young married people do and so I needed a job and I had a state have an aunt who work at Diamond Shamrock Oil and Gas and they were there of advertising agency was the McCormick company called McCormick advertising at the time and

22:21 Steve mom said well, let me let me ask this lady this Aunt if if she can get an interview for you at this Ad Agency. So I interviewed on Friday afternoon and it was a long interview took up like three hours at the strenuous and I cried when I left cuz I thought you know, this isn't going to happen because I don't have an opening. So that was bad on Saturday morning. He called me the boss called me and he said well.

22:55 Can you come can you come to work and I said well convenience store and I need you to come in and answer the phones for us if you can and I thought well, you know, I don't have a job. And so I did and what I love about that and I advise other young people about that now.

23:26 Since I started this is what was job in the place where I couldn't make a mistake, you know, if your the receptionist can't make a mistake and that was you know, I talked about luck and the blessings of life and all that. But what good fortune that was that turned out that little job and that little girl robbing a convenience store. Let me have an opening and that's how I moved.

23:57 So you answer the phone for a little while, but you also Spencer time looking around and seeing what goes on at an advertising agency and a in pretty soon you were doing more than just answering the phone, right?

24:15 Yeah, there was a man who had an office right by the reception desk and I could hear everything else going on and I saw the flies when they went into his office and when I can he came out here to take care of the client is always last minute and I was doing that and I was here that you had a big deadline. I would just go ahead and try to do something to fill in for him and hand it to him and say well maybe maybe this will help you and then he around them the office begin to understand. Oh, maybe she can do more than being a receptionist was there two years.

25:06 Set my husband finish school when he got a job in Wichita Kansas. We left, you know, this love and fate and what drives a lie if I hadn't left and gone to that other agency in proving myself to myself and then been able to come back to McCormick. I had an open invitation to come by. I think I would have always been the receptionist that moved up and because I had that other experience more of a better. I think I respected myself more because I made it in a different environment and I think it helped me earn the respect of the people in the apartment because I was able to go out and do the house.

26:00 So pretty soon you were an account executive working on probably what was about the biggest Accounting in the agency at the time. Right, right.

26:14 And and if we're traveling and doing all kinds of stuff taken care of taking care of it a big account and probably several bank accounts and dealing with clients.

26:28 Yeah, but by that point and yes, that was the biggest account and and one of the most longstanding accounts for the agent is very important, but my experience to that because it was also an agricultural agency and it worked out well, but but when I think back what was that like you have a demanding job and Steve was working full-time and you know there we were just a family just scrambling and in what it really took for me as the mother of the family to be able to get out and do that and then serve that client at the level that they needed service. Took my husband. I'm pretty awesome and see the kids and they have stories about him riding her daughter's hair, but it was supposed to have two braids.

27:28 Laugh about it now and has bad cooking until 4, but but I'll say I don't know that I would have succeeded at all and is what I was trying to tell you if he has been the kind of guy he was in those kids had some responsibility because she had to take the braids out that he did and fix her up.

28:00 Yeah, for sure. So you were on the road a lot during those times and one of the things I remember about you is how you would come back from trips and tell stories about people you had met on the road and I'll be so amazed because people strangers would just totally open up to you and tell you some of their deepest secret since and you know, really what was going on in their life or something really interesting about their lives and I was always amazed that you could get people to do that. So tell us about that and you know what you think it was about you that makes people open up and then tell us about one of those stories.

28:46 Well, I have a lot of people in this is it's amazing how many times people say? I've never told anybody what I just told you. I mean not I don't know. It's kind of freaky but I think it is that I just ask people questions and I guess I'm genuinely interested in other people curious or nosy. I don't know what it is. But but you know when you look someone in the eye and really want to hear what they have to say, I think you get to hear what they have to say. So so one of the stories of men that I was on a late-night flight into Kansas City.

29:27 And this woman was sitting next to me. She was a nun. She had her have it on and she was crying. She was against the window and I was in The Isle State there was nobody between us so I just stepped to her. Is there anything I can do to help you? Are you? Okay, and she poured her heart out. She'd shoot stop crying and she explained. She was on her way back from a trip to Europe for her home Convent was and she was in Kansas City and they have told her that the convent was out of money going broke closing down and they were not going to support this Kansas City operation anymore, and she didn't know what she was going to do and she just was devastated because her whole life has been all centered around being a teacher and being a nun.

30:16 Why why?

30:20 For that out to me. I'm not sure but I think it gave her some comfort just to be able to tell the story and and I was glad I listened but I really did feel sorry for how I wish I could.

30:35 So when you and I first met we were working for the owner of the agency a man named on perfect and he was quite a character or creative type and and Dad just a very interesting person and I think I meant her to you and me but when I came to work there you I think mr. Kirby was at the end of a long journey of trying to find a successor and there were a number of men in the agency who probably wanted that job and he ended up choosing you so tell us about all of that.

31:18 Well, yes, you know if you go back and this has been 30 years ago a long time ago and it was hard for both men and women can step up for women's equality and I'm not hiring young man to be his successor. And and when he hired somebody he can train them up and I never had intention to take the top job. So I trained him up the best I could show him what to do and how everything works and take them on client meetings. That was not uncommon. We have lunch pretty off and then

32:10 He said well casing maybe it's you to call me Casey cuz my initials are Casey Casey. Maybe it's you and I said maybe what it's me what I said. Well, you know those guys and work out. Maybe you're the one that's going to take this agency over and so I said well without permission lined up somebody that I wanted to come to work from apartment, but then as I thought it true he would also be a really good partner so much trouble finding success finding a successor.

32:49 I thought if I take this place over I want to know who's going to come in behind and help me with this company for that matter. And so so that part of that story again, and I don't mean to keep going back to funny things that happen, but you don't know why but why did I ask this young man named Mark Perrin. He was fresh out of college when I asked you if you think you might ever want to come to work at McCormick. I didn't have any authority to hire anybody back then I was just and so did I I just figured he'd be really good partner in it.

33:38 Yeah, so you and Mark were a dynamic duo if there ever was one and so you took the agency from us fairly small size into us a fairly large Regional operation with actually offices in Canada and Europe and media buyers in New York and and things really things really worked out didn't they but it's just good luck and hard work. It's good people. I mean Mary, you know, you're one of those people that help make all that happen. So I got to give you some credit right here on the spot.

34:24 Well, it was a it was a pleasure to get to to watch and just learn and all of that. So so here you are after a great career and you're in retirement you've for the most part you still help some clients and because nobody wants to let go of you tell me what retirement is like now for you.

34:50 Well, you know, I watch people retire and then die and I thought well, I don't want to do that.

34:56 So I did keep keep a client or two and it really gives me

35:03 Up and lynched him here and there to hang onto things and and I appreciate that but what I and I love that but what I love more is spending time with my kids and grandkids and maybe doing some of those things that I didn't do with little kids when my kids were little and I'm not great grandma. Let me tell you what I'll let it go at that, but we sure have a lot of fun.

35:32 They probably appreciate your creativity.

35:37 Well, I take a bunch of stuff and then when that stuff out of it, and it's really fun. I have so many paper towel tubes that you can blow into and make music with run balls down and if you make a big trail with them, and I mean tubes are wonderful toys.

36:01 Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. Okay. Well, let's kind of wrap up here. Let's talk about what you think some of the themes of your life are and what you know, just just what you might want to leave behind as a legacy to others and and maybe those granddaughters of yours and and what you would like them to know about the things you learned in life.

36:30 Wow, that sounds like a funeral Mary. Let's not do that.

36:34 Okay, look I do that. All right, I'll go and I never did call him by his first name. He said you know, it's always better to be good luck Good Fortune. Is there if you let it happen and he's being in the right place at the right time who's who's going to know that this receptionist is going to rob a convenience store and open up the power that things happen as they should.

37:26 Since you're not really in charge, I think that's important to remember and you know, if I if I just summed it up by say the meaning of life is just to live it live it be nice to people.

37:42 And carry on.

37:45 Well, I think that's a great way to end our conversation and thanks Kathy. I really appreciate you telling your story it is it's always fascinating to meet here at him and I appreciate your time today.

38:00 Well, I appreciate you marry.