James M. Albright

James M. Albright has been away from Eastman Kodak Company 28 years ... longer than he worked there … some 23 years. He was there, however, during some of this former great company’s glory years, albeit at the end of those glory years.

He joined Kodak in January 1970 after three years with the General Electric Company in Syracuse, NY, Utica, NY and Pittsfield, MA where he went from being a technical writer in Syracuse to a public relations expert in Pittsfield.

He also spent three years with public relations agencies in Syracuse … through which he became an expert on credit cards, ropes, pumps, drafting machines and several other things he knew nothing about before being charged with writing about them.

Intermingled among this activity was 10 years of study at Syracuse University that resulted in a B.S. in Physics, a Masters in Communications at Newhouse, and almost a PhD Communications.

Concerning the PhD, he basically completed the course work but didn’t do the dissertation because a second child had arrived thanks to his wife given birth to same, so rather than see him and his family starve to death, it behooved him to get a full-time job.

The part-time jobs he had at that time had been underwhelming.

He tried selling a vacuum cleaner filled with water that was supposed to collect the dirt. Unfortunately, at the first home he visited, he forgot to latch the lid that held the water in and when he went to pick it up all the water gushed out over the poor lady’s carpet. He was able to slurp most of it up through reversed suction, but that was the end of that job.

That was followed by numerous other efforts some happening concurrently:

They included:

1. Covering high school sports on weekends for the Syracuse Herald-Journal (which no longer exists but he doesn’t believe it was him that drove it out of business since their demise occurred 50 years after he left.) He did this for a couple of years and greatly enjoyed doing it. Of course, being basically an intern, his most pressing duty was getting Sports Editor Arnie Burdick’s (his nom de plume was The Old Scout) tea from a little café around the corner. That café is now a Dinosaur Bar-B-Que Restaurant that would have been a better deal. At least he could have gotten a beer while waiting for Arnie’s tea.

2. Getting his license and selling mutual funds with his selling to only one person - himself.

3. Operating a telephone switchboard for an answering service from midnight to morning in which the only call generally was from a divorced lady in California trying to reach her ex-husband. Of course, that’s why the “ex” had an answering service … so she couldn’t reach him.

4. Producing a newsletter for University College … Syracuse University’s evening school for part-timers seeking their degree while working full time.

5. Producing a quarterly magazine called EVENT for University College. It dealt with social issues and actually had a national mailing list that included the Syracuse Chief of Police. He happened, by some strange quirk, to get a parking ticket and considered offering a free subscription to EVENT if the Chief could make it go away.

Fortunately, he decided against doing it particularly since EVENT was free to begin with. Others on the mailing list included the Mayor of Scranton, PA; an official with the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston, MA; an administrator at the University of Colorado; the executive director of the Bayonne, NJ Chamber of Commerce; among 400 or so diverse others. (Actually, a better description than “diverse” would be “mish-mash.”)

Going back to full-time work occurred with his joining a Syracuse public relations firm. The job was great from an experience standpoint … he got to do a lot of writing … but heaven forbid, a client decided to leave. You tended to leave as well.

Thus he joined a second Syracuse public relations firm.

About two clients leaving later he was no longer associated with that organization.

He began looking for a more secure situation. He had two substantial job offers … both for $13,000 a year. (That was double what he had made at General Electric.)

Gas was only about $.35 a gallon and cows would pay you $.25 a gallon to drink their milk. So that seemed like a lot of money to him.

One offer was from Clarion St. University in Clarion PA as a combined professor/sports information director. It sounded really interesting but there were two problems. First, Clarion St. is in the middle of nowhere. It had one cab that happened to be a tricycle. Second, it sounded like an awful lot of work being as how it was two jobs in one.

The other offer was from Kodak.

He decided to go with Kodak because it was a darn good company, known for keeping its employee promises and would, in all likelihood, be around forever. His job was to handle public relations in some of their technical areas. It was a good fit using his education and past experience.

After about three years of writing about photofabrication, industrial and medical x-rays and other assorted scientific endeavors he was commissioned to be a spokesperson for the company with local and national media. That was a very interesting job involving everything from media calls at midnight about horrible stinks being emitted from Kodak smokestacks to wondering why Kodak had refused to sponsor the local hop-skip-and-jump tournament.

He was the Kodak spokesperson for about seven years when suddenly management decided that the position should not be handled by a peon and should be done by an upper ma

All was not lost, however. He had been helping the sports promotion group as a volunteer and they saw a need for his services full time. So, henceforth, for the next 18 years (13 as an employee, five as a consultant) it was sports or die.

Sports promotion at Kodak was in its golden era. There were 15 employees working on sports promotions alone out of about 800 in the Corporate Information Department. Today, he doesn’t think there are a total of 15 people left working for Kodak … out of 60-70,000 that used to work for the company in Rochester.

After leaving Kodak in 1993, he formulated his own company, The Write Solutions. This has lasted 28 years so far and has involved the production of over 300 magazine articles, 500 columns, 200 news releases and 150 photographs.

Eastman Kodak Company … Wegmans LPGA Tournament … About Time Magazine … Gymnastic Training Center … Birds Eye Frozen Foods … and Ontario Honda are a few of the clients serviced over the years.

These days, he is concentrating on writing and producing books ... several of which are offered through his web site: thewritesolutiosbooks.com

Books written include "Krazy Kodak Moments"… "Still Building A Better Community …, and the fictional "Reverent Revelations About Roostercrowing, Old York."

Three photography books completed include "Galloping Toward Gone" … "Three Tint World" … and "The Albrights Of Hannacroix, Amsterdam, Pittsfield, Syracuse And Rochester."

A seventhS book, "Event Magazine 1965-1967" contains the copies of Event Magazine which he created for Syracuse University.

Oh yeah. In his spare time, he spent some 15 years as media co-chairperson for the Wegmans LPGA Golf Tournament which used to be held in Rochester, NY and 21 years as a seasonal tax preparer for H&R Block.

The 15 years with the Wegmans LPGA Tournament afforded him the opportunity to meet some wonderful women professional golfers. Some of his favorites include Nancy Lopez, Laura Davis, Lorena Ochoa, Karrie Webb, Paula Creamer, Michele Wee, etc., etc.

Doing taxes for about 200 clients a year at H&R Block also was very interesting. Most of the clients were wonderful to work with.

However, there were a few that were not so nice.

He had a client pick up one of his business cards off his desk, tear it up and throw it at him (hitting him in his nose).

Another client dropped over on the floor with an alcohol-related fit.

Another one wanted to claim his girlfriend’s son as a dependent. When told he couldn’t because they were not married, and the son was not related to him he provided so many swear words that a nearby Marine blushed.

Yet another one got in a verbal battle with the receptionist and returned to the office a few minutes later with a policeman. Fortunately, no one was arrested.

There was also the time a deceased woman was found in a car in the parking lot in front of the office.

That parking lot also often contained an entrepreneur selling pirated films and music out of his trunk as well as numerous homeless types seeking their fortune from incoming clients. (They also often came into the office seeking a cup of free coffee which was supposed to go to our clients. This we allowed as long as they didn’t try doing it every hour during their daily tour of duty.)

For the most part, all this has kept him pretty much out of personal mischief.

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