67-year Club member Craig Lewis dies at 91
Some 70 years ago, the National Press Building was owned by the National Press Club and hosted dozens of Washington bureaus for newspaper, magazine, newsletter and broadcast outlets from across the country and around the world. It was the vibrant hub of a thriving media industry and the perfect place for an aspiring reporter to seek his or her fortune.
In September 1952, Craig Lewis, a new graduate of UCLA, arrived in Washington and worked his way through Press Building offices hoping to find an entry-level job. He found one on the 11th floor as a copyboy in the McGraw-Hill Washington Bureau. It was the start of a long career in journalism and public relations and a 67-year membership in the National Press Club.
Lewis died Feb. 9 in Ojai, Calif., at the age of 91. He was born in Detroit and raised in New Jersey and Los Angeles.
"He loved being a Club member, and a member of the Washington press corps," said his son, Mark. "He was especially happy to recommend me for Club membership circa 2007." He said his mother recalled "how exciting it was that young, poorly paid journalists like dad could come to D.C. and find themselves at the center of the action ... when America was unquestionably the international colossus, and Washington the new Rome. More so than today, to be a young journalist in Washington during the '50s was to find yourself at the hub of the universe, with a vital role to play there. Very heady stuff."
His son, Mark, recounts his father's career:
After some six months at McGraw-Hill, he was promoted to cub reporter and assigned to Bus Transportation, where the editor in New York who fielded his copy was a young Jimmy Breslin. Lewis also did some reporting for Business Week. Around 1955 he landed at Aviation Week & Space Technology, yet another McGraw-Hill title, edited by Robert B. Hotz.
Hotz sent Lewis to Dallas to open a new bureau there, but soon brought him back to Washington as national bureau chief after Sputnik launched the space race. At Aviation Week, Lewis had a ringside sat for the epochal "Right Stuff" era – the Mercury program, Alan Shepard, John Glenn, etc. – and the dawn of the commercial jet age with the arrival of the Boeing 707.
In 1961, Lewis joined the Kennedy Administration as deputy communications director at the FAA under Najeeb Halaby. In that job, he wrote the speech President Kennedy delivered at the opening of Dulles International Airport in 1962. (He grumbled good-naturedly that Kennedy pal Arthur Schlesinger Jr. had reworked the speech to make it less aviation-wonky and more political.)
From the FAA, Lewis moved on to the Air Transport Association as vice president for public relations, and then in 1964 moved to New York as public relations director for the aerospace firm Martin Marietta, thus completing the classic public relations career arc from journalism to government to trade association to corporate P.R.
All through his Washington years, Lewis had remained a devoted NPC member and a regular presence on the 14th floor. Even after leaving D.C., he maintained his membership and visited the club whenever he was in Washington.
In 1967, Lewis joined Earl Newsom & Co., a highly regarded P.R. consultancy. He eventually became its CEO. These were his "Mad Men" years, when he commuted by train fromsuburban New Rochelle to Midtown Manhattan, wrote speeches for the likes of broadcast pioneers William S. Paley and Frank Stanton of CBS, longtime Newsom clients.
One speech he wrote for Stanton in 1982 was excerpted in the Washington Post, where it caught the eye of a young Delaware senator named Joe Biden. The future president wrote Stanton an enthusiastic fan letter, which Stanton shared with Lewis, the actual author.
Later the 1980s, Lewis sold Earl Newsom to a larger P.R. firm, Adams & Rinehart, and came along himself as part of the deal. In 1994, Lewis retired as vice chairman/international at Ogilvy Public Relations Group and moved to Ojai, Calif., where he served on the local hospital board, volunteered at the local homeless shelter, read three or four newspapers each morning. In 2008, he returned to Washington to join fellow Golden Owls in celebrating the Club's centennial.
Lewis died at home with his wife of 66 years, artist Karen K. Lewis. Other survivors include his brother Timothy, his sons Mark and Kern, his daughters Arden and Robin, and six grandchildren. His brother Dale Lewis preceded him in death.