Block, Ed

Ed Block was senior vice president of public relations for AT&T from 1975 to 1986 and was one of the principal founders of the Arthur W. Page Society, which inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 1993.

Block became AT&T's senior vice president of public relations when a friend and contemporary who held the job succumbed to lung cancer at the age of 50. He retired from that position 11 years later, following the 1984 demise of the Bell Telephone System. In between, he led a public relations organization of more than 4,000 employees at AT&T and its 21 principal subsidiaries. He established the AT&T Foundation with the proceeds from selling the company's headquarters building and directed grants of more than $250 million to education, community, and arts organizations. In the era before 24-hour news channels, he helped the Public Broadcasting System launch the first onehour evening news program by making a five-year, $50 million underwriting commitment to the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. And when, to settle a government anti-trust suit, AT&T divested the local telephone companies through which it was primarily known, he crafted a new identity for the company and built it into one of the world's best-known brands. The trajectory of his life demonstrates how one success builds on another when you seize opportunities others might mistake for chance, coincidence, or even bad luck.

Edward Martel Block was born on July 10, 1927, in Houston, Texas, where he was brought up and attended parochial schools. His mother gave her maiden name to each of her sons as a middle name in celebration of her Louisiana French heritage. His father was a Certified Public Accountant who counted Howard Hughes' father among his clients. Somewhat to his father's dismay and unlike his older brother, Ed had no interest in joining the family business. Perhaps inspired by family friends who were editors and columnists, young Ed always wanted to be a newspaper reporter. Nevertheless, following high school, he attended Notre Dame University to study business. However, after two semesters and as soon as he turned 17, he joined the United States Marine Corps. He had hoped to be accepted for pilot training in either the Navy or the Army, but a deformed jaw disqualified him, and he spent the last years of World War II riding a desk in Pensacola, Florida.

Mustered out of the armed services in August 1946 and uncertain about his future, he enrolled at the University of Houston. But that decision didn't last. A high school friend proposed a visit to Saint Edwards University in Austin, only a small detour from their intended destination, a country music concert. Discovering that one of his former Notre Dame professors had transferred there, he enrolled for the January semester. He became editor of the Saint Edwards student newspaper, but to placate his father, he also took business courses at Notre Dame during the summer. In the end, he switched his major to journalism and received his degree from Saint Edwards.

While in school, he worked part-time for United Press and, also, the Austin American Statesman, where he covered high school sports. On the Monday following his college graduation, he joined the reporting staff of the Banner Press in Brenham, Texas, halfway between Houston and Austin. Soon married to the former Shirley Ross Young and beginning a family, Block supplemented his $40-aweek reporter's salary by doing evening newscasts [Page 87]for $10 a week at the newspaper's radio station and moonlighting for UP at 10 cents a word.

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