Thanks to good fortune, I met Edward L. Bernays when I was a public relations graduate student at Boston University. Edward, the father of the public relations profession, was a mentor to university students and also served on the board of directors of a non-profit organization where I started my public relations career. There began our friendship, only to end with Edward’s death in 1995 just months short of his 104th birthday.

Edward is credited as the first to name his practice “counsel on public relations,” a strategy for raising the level of his profession above publicists and promoters. And counselor he was, advising industry and world leaders including Henry Luce, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, U.S. Presidents Coolidge, Wilson, Hoover and Eisenhower, and, one of his favorites, Mamie Eisenhower. He used strategies like a simple carving contest with Ivory Soap to win over children and their moms, and the endorsements of physicians to support the sale of bananas as a healthy food for the digestive system.

He referred to public relations professionals as applied psychologists, an idea influenced by his uncle Sigmund Freud. Research was always a cornerstone of his work, and it was the first step in an eight-step planning process he labeled the Engineering of Consent.

There may never be a public relations leader who is more recognized or honored than Edward, and three of the many awards he received later in his life are particularly memorable for me:

Life Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential Americans of the 20th Century—He told me, with a snicker, that as one of only two on the list who lived past 100, he had an advantage as other potential honorees were long gone and maybe forgotten.

The Smithsonian Institute commissioned and then installed his portrait in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.—Using one of his favorite lines, he said to the crowd gathered for his induction ceremony: “It’s the moral equivalent of immortality.”

The request by the Library of Congress to catalog and preserve his letters, writings and other memorabilia.—The man who once said that being disregarded was his worst nightmare would have a peaceful rest.

Through my work at the Boston non-profit group where I began my career, I was fortunate to accompany the tireless Bernays to meetings that included PR legends Otto Lerbinger, Carol Hill and Bernard Ruben, Massachusetts Governor and 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, Harvard President Derek Bok, Boston Globe Publisher William Taylor, Fidelity Investments’ Caleb Loring and James Curvey, author Jonathan Kozol, Boston Community Fund President Ana Faith Jones and other business and community leaders. His opinions were valued, and he made a contribution with his ideas until the end of his life.

My fondest memories, though, are from the conversations at Edward’s Cambridge home that often lasted into the wee hours of the morning. That’s when my girlfriend (now wife) and I would listen and laugh as Edward described his lifetime of experiences. I am so fortunate to have heard those countless stories, which were an oral history of business and public relations, but I am even more grateful for witnessing his lifelong commitment to learning and change. - J.R. Hipple