Ed Proctor, who retired from the Guild Co. last year after 68 years in the list business, died on Saturday at age 90, DIRECT Newsline has learned.
Spanning the Addressograph and computer eras, Proctor brokered lists for scores of mailers, including Newsweek, Walter Drake, Figi’s, Foster & Gallagher, Miles Kimball and Meredith, to name only a few. In an interview in 1996, the late Tom Foster described Proctor and his assistant Fanny Simms as “two of the most legitimate people I ever met in the list business.
“He was a wonderful gentleman,” said Hal Roberson, president of Guild Co. and Market Development Corp. “He represented a different era, exemplified by character, honesty, loyalty, integrity.”
A tall thin man with a wry sense of humor, Edward Walcott Proctor Jr. was born in 1909, and grew up in Teaneck, NJ. His father, Edward, was a list broker and general manager for Guild Co., a list firm founded in 1899 by Charles Howard Guild.
After attending the Hackley boarding school in Tarrytown, NY, Proctor matriculated at Cornell University and planned a journalistic career. But at the height of the Depression in 1931, his father told him he had to leave school and come to work for the company, which he had acquired after Guild died in 1920.
Although he continued taking night courses at Columbia University, Proctor immersed himself in the list business, and soon found himself attending to clients like Davis Paint Co. of Kansas City, and American Products of Cincinatti, both of which mailed in great quantities during the 1930s.
In addition to brokerage, part of his job was convincing such companies to put their own lists up for rental, and to use Guild as exclusive broker of the list.
“In those days, customers’ names were coveted,” he said in an interview in 1995. “Mailers thought they were the only person in the world with that particular name.”
Proctor joined the Navy as an ensign in 1942, and served on a destroyer in the South Pacific. In July 1945, while recovering in a naval hospital from an eye infection, Proctor learned of his father’s death. Soon he was back home running the business, which had suffered during the war years.
Thanks to the post-war boom, and to steady 18-hour workdays by Proctor, Guild Co. soon turned around. Newsweek rented massive numbers of names using Proctor as broker, and he also did substantial business with McCall’s and Redbook. In 1951, Proctor was visited by Tom Foster who had recently started the firm later known as Foster & Gallagher; he wanted to put his list on the market.
“He was tall and lean, and even when it was 98 degrees, he would have a three-piece suit on,” Foster remembered of Proctor.
In 1951, Proctor moved his office from New York to Englewood, NJ, making Guild the first list firm to move to the suburbs. “People thought I was crazy for moving,” he laughed.
Proctor sold the business to Bob Dale in the early 1970s, although he continued to run it. In 1975 the firm was acquired by Hal Roberson and is now a division of Mail Marketing, Inc. It is located in Haworth, NJ.
Although he retired in 1979, Proctor continued working for a few days a week at Guild Co., brokering clients like Walter Drake. Illness finally forced him to stop working last year.
Proctor is survived by his wife Mary; by his son Edward W. Proctor III,; and by his daughter, Talley Wright. He is also survived by several grandchildren.
A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday, March 12, at the Presbyterian Church of Tenafly, NJ. Donations can be made to the church.
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