Building on the Foundation

One of the earliest efforts by the, then, Counselors Section was a form of certification recognizing a practitioner's level of competence. Paul Cain, Chair in 1962, and Scott Jones, who led the Section in 1963, capitalized on the pioneering work done by Counselor Ed Pendray, considered by most to have been the father of the PRSA Accreditation program.

At the 1965 Denver PRSA Conference, the Section's annual meeting again made history. Jim Hanson, APR, Fellow PRSA had been proposed as Chair for 1965; Pat Penney, APR, Fellow PRSA of Los Angeles was nominated for Vice Chair and would thus inherit the Chair the following year. Male chauvinism was still a fact of life back then, as a Detroit Counselor rose to block this historic nomination of the first woman leader of the Section. The assembled members voted down the upstart and, in 1966, Pat took office.

By that time, regional meetings were springing up and the professional education effort, a major goal from the beginning, was being implemented.

In Dan Edelman's, APR, Fellow PRSA year, 1969, the Chicago-based Chair urged the Section to hold a separate meeting each Spring. As Dan put it, "Our peers in law and accounting, and every other kind of consulting activity, get away once a year to a resort so that they can exchange ideas and get to know each other better. We should have the courage to arrange just that kind of event that features and other forms of entertaintment."

The recommendation was accepted, and in 1970, under Chair Jim Fox of New York, the first Spring Conference was held in the Bahamas. "If we're going to bring it off," Jim recalled, "we would have to schedule it at an exotic location, one that our members could afford. We chose the Bahamas. The attendance problem was addressed in a brilliant way: We formed a 25-man-program committee, including all the heavy hitters, on the assumption they would feel obligated to attend and bring spouses. They did, and it worked."