Sally’s Corner

To celebrate Mother’s Day, we’re sharing some of the best “Sally’s Corner” articles with you.  Sally Brickman, Jim’s mother, writes an article in the monthly newsletter, so we’ve gone through the archives and found some of the best to share with you.

I’m Taking Credit

Last night along with the other millions of folks around the world, I watched the Academy Awards show on TV. As I am an avid movie goer I enjoyed it thoroughly, seeing the many replays and actors that I have been so impressed with over the past year. I have a feeling you may know where I am going with this one.

So, so many thanks from the award winning actors to their mothers! I especially enjoyed when the director of the Oscar winning Kings Speech said that his thanks to his mother was especially important because (and he pointed her out in the audience), it was she who brought to his attention that a movie on the subject of King George VI would be a wonderful idea worth pursuing.

I am going to share with you a really deep dark secret from James’s past which illustrates a similar story (thank you Mother!). James was about 17 years old and he was attending Cleveland’s Institute of Music/Case Western Reserve Univ. joint program. You may recall, he was writing jingles from his dorm room, but was frustrated with the college curriculum and aching to get a job in the real music world.

At about that same time, I attended a meeting of Cleveland’s Chapter of Women in Communications where the speaker was a man named Paul King, who ran a commercial recording studio. As I write this, I am holding the notebook I took to that meeting eons ago and have saved to this day. Mr. King said “We are not producers, we are engineers. Primarily we do industrial presentations and small commercials. We stock a music library and provide tapes. We help with mixing and editing.” After the meeting I spoke with him about James, and he said he might need a clerk. I told James, he applied and got that clerk job where he ended up literally sweeping the floors, preparing the coffee and soon learning everything there was to know about the the commercial recording business. And that set the stage for his future. All this while he was still in college.

James was and is the hardest worker I know, never shying away from a job that may appear too small. You never know what it will lead to.

So like the mother at the Academy Awards, I will take some of the credit, thank you.

This edition of Sally’s Corner was originally published in February 2011