 Rockey with Gerard Piel, chairman of Scientific American, at the
Pacific Science Center in the 1980s. Pacific Science Center was created
during the World's Fair and was Rockey's first client once the fair was
over.
Jay Rockey ’50 had grown up in Olympia, enlisted in the navy
during the last days of World War II, then went off to Washington
State College to major in English and journalism, play
second-string basketball, and sing in a quartet called the
Spectacles.
After graduation, he returned to the navy for the Korean War,
then worked for a while for the United Press, covering the state
legislature. Next to him sat Jim Faber, with the Associated Press.
Eight hours a day, for four months. They got to be good
friends.
Through a college friend’s father who was regional public
relations director for Alcoa, he landed a PR job with Alcoa in
Vancouver. There he met Retha Ingraham, and they married. They
headed East, where Jay manned Alcoa’s New York office. He loved
it—the job, the city, everything about it. But after five or six
years and three children, he and Retha started thinking about
moving back West, where their family was.
One day, Jack Ryan, formerly with the Seattle Times, now
working the finance section of the New York Times, called
and said there’s a press conference you ought to be interested in.
Washington governor Albert Rosellini was giving a press conference
over the phone. The guy directing the conference from Washington
was Jay’s old friend, Jim Faber. Rosellini announced that Seattle
was going to host an exposition.
“I called [Faber],” says Rockey. “He was actually working for
the fair.”
A little later, Faber was in New York. Rockey took him to
Sardi’s, and they talked. Then Rockey flew to Seattle, just to
check out the job scene. He had a meeting with Faber at the fair’s
planning headquarters.
He walked in and asked the receptionist for Faber, but was told
Faber had quit the night before. But, she says, let me check with
Mr. Dingwall, who invited Rockey into his office.
“Half an hour later they offered me a job,” says Rockey. “And I
said, ‘Are you kidding?’ I wanted to work for Boeing or
Weyerhaeuser.”
But as Rockey left for the airport, Dingwall said, let’s keep
talking.
That was January 1960. In May, he drove into Seattle with his
family, ready to spread the word about Century 21.
Shortly after they arrived, the PI ran an editorial
claiming it could not see how the fair could possibly make it. “Do
you really know what you’re doing?” Retha asked Jay.
Now, from an actual 21st-century perspective, we realize that
the fair left Seattle with much more than the Space Needle, the
Monorail (at least, the elevated track), and one of Elvis’s
less-memorable movies. Nearly ten million people visited the fair
the summer of 1962. Somehow, Rockey got the fair on the cover of
Life. Twice. And on a postage stamp, to boot.
After a six-month run, Seattle found itself discovered. (As a
fourth grader in Indiana, I’d have been hard pressed to locate
Seattle, until my teacher, Mrs. Kuhn, sent me and my classmates
postcards of the Space Needle from the World’s Fair.)
In other words, the fair was a fabulous success, and Seattle had
joined the ranks of the world’s great cities. Jay Rockey, of
course, did not do it by himself. But he got everybody to
notice.
Read part two: The
Rockey style
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