Thomas O. RyderChairman of the BoardThe Reader's Digest Association, Inc.
Acceptance Speech, Henry Johnson Fisher Award Lifetime Achievement AwardsFebruary 1, 2007New York, NY
Danny and Gary are my seriously good friends. I want to thank them for their time and effort, but most of all for remembering the good things, forgetting the bad things and suppressing the truly humiliating things they could have said about me. Real friends do that.
I actually have a lot of great friends here today and I want to thank you sincerely for coming, especially my buddy Eric Schrier and our wonderful colleagues from Reader’s Digest who made every day of my eight years there a joy. They also taught me a lifetime of lessons about honor and commitment and dedication and decency.
And, I am so proud to share this day with Lewis Lapham whom I have admired for years—both for his magazine work and for his golf swing.
On an occasion similar to this Yogi Berra said roughly the following:
“I want to thank all those who made today necessary.”
In fact, there are some people who made today necessary because earning their respect always meant more to me than anything else. They are my family and they are here and I am so proud to introduce them:
First, the Queen of the Ryder Family, Miss Darlene. She has been my partner, my fount of wisdom and my love for 44 years—that, by the way—is since we were each 18 years old. In that time we have collaborated on virtually everything in our lives, but nothing as successfully as our four truly fabulous children.
Shannon Ryder Bell is the eldest and she is beautiful in every way that word can be understood. Shannon is here with her husband, Dr. Lance Bell.
Robert O’Neal Ryder is our big, tough son with a heart of gold who commands respect with a natural ease. Rob is here with his wife Chi.
Ashley Ryder Gengras is creative, very smart and about the toughest competitor I know. Ash is here with her husband Chip Gengras.
And finally, the princess. Alyson O’Neal Ryder who is brilliant, frighteningly focused and just plain sensational. Aly is here with her fiancée Justin Burks.
I think I can honestly say these folks never let me get confused about what was most important in life and I adore them.
Now I am going to admit to something unseemly: I have wanted for so long to be on this podium one day as the recipient of this award. The fact is awards have never meant much to me and those who know me understand that I am uncomfortable with praise, but this is special. Magazines not only changed my life, they gave Miss Darlene and me a life and I want to believe being here means that, in some small way, I gave something back.
Let me tell you a bit about my most unlikely journey to this podium. This is a story even my children know only parts of. People often ask me why I smile so much. This is why.
I grew up on the wrong side of a small town in Louisiana, a couple of hundred miles from anything that might be called a city. My parents were simple people of very modest means who loved their children and devoted themselves to us. This was the rural south in the 50s. There was no car in our family until I was ten years old. We walked or rode bicycles. There was no television until I was in junior high school. We entertained ourselves by reading and listening to the radio and telling stories. We had indoor plumbing when I was a kid, but our next-door neighbors did not. I learned early mathematical concepts calculating the relative frequency with which the nasty little Mayeux kids next door went to the outhouse, which was perched perilously close to my bedroom window.
It was a simple place, in a simpler time, and the contrast with the lives my children have led, or I suspect most of you have led, is almost impossible to understand.
I loved growing up in the rural south. There was a beauty to it I wouldn’t change for anything. But, there were limitations. The frame of reference for kids like me was extremely narrow. And, aspiration, even for kids of talent, and there were a lot of them, was, too often, limited to what we knew and could see. We didn’t know much and we couldn’t see very far so we tended to stay home with what we knew. But, some of us got lucky.
My brother, who was my best friend, and I spent most of our early summers in Fishville, Louisiana. My grandparents had an old, rundown fishing camp with a screened porch and a tin roof and an “entertainment center.” The entertainment center was a corner of the porch with big old cushy sofas and a few hundred old dog-eared magazines. Life. Look. Saturday Evening Post. Colliers. Time. Newsweek. And, a little magazine called Reader’s Digest. Remember, no television.
Those magazines were a refuge. They were a revelation. An inspiration. It is not the slightest exaggeration to say that my life and my outlook and my aspiration was transformed, not by school, but by the countless hours I spent pouring through them, devouring the world outside, that I found in those magazines, on the porch in Fishville, next door to Slick’s Skating Rink and Bait Stand.
They took me to a world away from my own. I discovered the mysteries of
China. The beauty of places like Kyoto. The sophistication of Paris and London. The majesty of Rome. The exuberance of Australia. I explored volcanoes and mountain peaks and the depths of the ocean. I became a citizen of the world. I found role models in politics and the arts and in business and of course in sports. I saw the horror of war and understood more clearly the terror of diseases like polio.
Those old magazines didn’t just help me learn, they gave me a new sense of possibility for myself. A new frame of reference.
Those magazines were magical for me.
In fact, when I was ten, I wrote my first article for publication and submitted it to… the Reader’s Digest. My brother and I spent most of our summer waiting out by the mailbox on the road for the check that never came. I think I made up for it though.
I got my first job in the magazine business on a bet. While I was ambitious, it never would have occurred to me to leave Louisiana. But, fate in the form of a magazine entered my life again.
Darlene and I had gone to the only school that interested us, the only one we applied to, in fact, the only one we could afford, Louisiana State University. I studied journalism because I could write and because some coursework could be done in local media outlets for which you could sometimes get paid. And, we certainly needed the money.
In my senior year, I was named editor of the LSU daily newspaper and I got a telegram one day (remember those?) inviting me to be one of ten editors of college dailies to spend a week at Cape Kennedy. I was to see one of the early space shots-- and visit with the astronauts and NASA scientists and the Publisher of Life Magazine and his staff. All expenses paid!
This was the great old Life Magazine that I grew up reading in Fishville and the publisher was inviting me on a trip. How cool was that! I almost broke my finger calling them back to say yes. I had never even been on an airplane and I was going to see guys taking a flight to outer space.
I loved everything about that trip. But, I loved the evenings most of all. We went to dinner and then out drinking every night—astronauts, rocket scientists, Life staff and the “baby editors” as they called us.
Now, going out eating and drinking was something LSU guys were really good at. And, it turned out those magazine guys were pretty good at it too. One night, very late, deep into a bottle of bourbon, when almost all the others were gone, I got into a poetry contest with one of the key executives at Life. We challenged each other to recite the opening stanzas of poems. After a couple of successes, I gave him “When I Was One and Twenty” by AE Houseman and he got a key word wrong, but refused to admit it. So, I bet him 20 bucks.
When I got home, I made a copy of the poem and sent it to him, pointing out the error of his ways. I said I was sure he really knew it but was simply addled by the bourbon. He sent back a very brief note I’ll never forget. It said: “Hey Kid, your 20 bucks is enclosed. How would you like a job?” It would be the only job offer I got.
So, Miss Darlene and I packed our meager belongings in an old yellow Oldsmobile and damn well drove to New York.
Most of my business life happened just like that. Lots of people have asked me how I planned my career. I absolutely never planned anything. I followed my interests. And I got advice from Darlene. I worked on magazines that seemed fun or interesting or important. And I tried to do good work and have fun at it every day and to make sure others around me had fun too. And, boy have I had fun!
Imagine the kid from Louisiana going to work for Life and Time Magazines. Then becoming publisher of My Weekly Reader and a group of children’s magazines with more than 20 million circulation when I was 25. Then leaving to start an educational publishing company with a couple of friends in Palo Alto, California, where Miss Darlene and I had never been, when we were 26 years old. Then it was back to New York ten years later with the special interest magazines of CBS, the predecessor company of Hachette, with great magazines like Road and Track, Field and Stream, Woman’s Day and Cuisine. Then to American Express Publishing and magazines like Travel & Leisure and Food &Wine and Departures and New York Woman and LA Style and ,of course, the Aspen Food & Wine Classic. By the way, I always thought this was the most enjoyable job in publishing.
American Express lured me away from the publishing business for a few years but I came back because I missed magazines and I wasn’t smiling as much. I came back to a job I believe I was ultimately fated to have-- with Reader’s Digest and Family Handyman and Taste Of Home and Every Day With Rachel Ray and one of the world’s great book publishing businesses in virtually every developed country in the world. Back finally, to where the aspiration had all begun---to the giant little magazine I used to read on the porch in Fishville, the one I sent my first article to when I was ten years old. Somehow it just seemed fitting.
It all went by too quickly. A magical magazine whirl. Along the way we touched some lives. We changed some lives. And, we even saved some lives. We just generally did lots more good than harm. Which is actually not a bad epitaph, not that I’m planning to need one anytime soon.
I wanted to tell you my story so you would understand the truth of what I am about to say. Magazine publishing changed my life, in fact, it gave me a life and I never had a day when I didn’t realize just how lucky I was, when I didn’t smile and pinch myself and marvel at what a fabulous way it was to earn a living.
And, here’s my wish for you: when you’re done I hope you feel exactly the same way.
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