Hello, my name is Kate Norris, and I am the oldest grandchild of George and Louise Pfeiffer.  I'm going to tell you the story of my grandfather, George Pfeiffer III --also lovingly referred to among family as "Grackie". I will also share some memories from friends who are far away, and will close with a memory of my own.

Some of what I’ll read will be stories that were told in my grandfather's own words.  Much of this  is made possible by the California Historical Society, which interviewed him in 1984 about his publishing career.  The interviewer spent several days talking with him and recording his words on tape.  Recently his daughter Lynne Pfeiffer, my mother, transcribed these tapes for him. Thus, we are fortunate to have many stories about Grackie's life, as told by himself. I'll quote from just a few of these today.

George Pfeiffer was born in the little town of Merchantville, in southern New Jersey on September 8, 1914.  He was the third of four children.  He had two older sisters, Anne and Molly and a younger brother, Howard.

The times were difficult -- as we all know the First World War, national economic problems, and finally the Great Depression caused widespread hardship for many American families. George's family, like so many others, was impacted by these hard times and forced to make sacrifices. For example, college was certainly not viewed an automatic privilege.  But because of a scholarship and some help from his Aunt Taffy, George was able to attend one year of school at Swarthmore College.

George remembers becoming interesting in books, and later in publishing, because of his Aunt Taffy Pfeiffer Dodd.  She was married to Frank Dodd of the Dodd-Mead Publishing Company. And Aunt Taffy would send the Pfeiffer children good children's books. George always said that that is where he first gained his love of books.

"Those times were so difficult," he said, "it is hard to imagine today.  Without some kind of special education or influence, you could get only part-time, short-term jobs.  You took whatever you could get. For seven years, I tried every way I could to get a meaningful job which paid a living wage." 

George had many different experiences during his years of part-time jobs.  He sold encyclopedias.  He sold a book called Forgotten Towns in Southern New Jersey.  He even worked on an ash wagon with Jersey Joe Walcott, who later became a world champion heavyweight boxer.  He also worked at Continental Can Company, making tin cans for Campbell Soup.

He wrote short stories, articles, a mystery novel -- and as he said, "got a lot of rejection slips."  But the editor of a local weekly newspaper read some of his stories, and asked him to write a history of his home town to be serialized in the paper.  The "History of Merchantville" was a big project.  The paper went to press every Friday night, so it was “research, write, print; research, write print”, on-and-on!  In all, the history turned out to be about 25 thousand words. 

Years later, in 1983, George received a letter from someone in New Jersey saying how valuable the "History of Merchantville" had become. 

George graduated from Merchantville High School in 1932.  It was there that he met my grandmother, Louise Robertson, who was a close friend of his two sisters.  As the story goes, when Louise would visit the Pfeiffer girls, George would then be assigned to walk her home, all the way across town -- and that is how they eventually got to know one another!

Grackie often told me the story of how grandma, in their early years of courtship, inspired him to break out of the temporary, short-term job cycle to begin his real career. In his interview with the California Historical Society, he recalled:

"With Louise's help, I wrote a resume in the form of a little newspaper, called The Personnel News-Record.  It was four pages, 8-1/2 by 11, and every section was entirely about me.  For example, the sports page was about when I had played football.  It was all written in third person, of course.  There was a Society Section - "...entertained by Continental Can Company, for the last three months...", something like that.  It was all made that way, every column.  In those days you had to have a Walter Winchell column - all hyphenated out."

"I went to the newspaper man for whom I had written the history of Merchantville.  He said they would print it for me for nothing and if I ever got a job, I would owe him $50.00." 

"In the Philadelphia Library, I looked up advertising agencies, book publishers, newspapers, magazines, and others.  I mailed to 750 of them.  I remember that, because it took some borrowing of money from sisters, brothers, and everybody to get enough for postage to mail it.  I received fourteen job offers -- fourteen after all those years.  It was very exciting.  So I did get a job and I did pay the newspaper back that $50.00!"

George took his first real publishing  job at Lippincott Publishing Company in Philadelphia at $25 a week.  He considered it the best place to begin to learn publishing.  There, he was put in charge of the mail order department --and made it profitable.  Mail order publishing -- direct mail -- became his area of expertise, and he was long known as an expert in that field. 

George and Louise had been engaged for about three years, and now they were able to get married.  They were married December 29, 1939. He said: 

"We chose that date because the church was still decorated --and we couldn't afford to decorate the church.  We didn't send out announcements, but both of our families lived in the same small town of Merchantville, so when I walked into that church there were 300 some people, and I nearly fell over.  It was because the mothers and grandmothers got to talking.  News travels fast in a small town."

George's daughter Lynne, my mother, was born at the end of 1941. As Grackie told me, my mother was born just as everyone's life changed due to the beginning of World War II. 

"The war was a constant presence in everyone's life then.  There were food shortages because of the labor shortages. George started a war effort program where office workers went to work on farms during their vacations.  The first publicity for this project started in local newspapers and local radio broadcasts." 

He remembered:

"That was tough to do!  I had never talked on the radio before, and I did 21 broadcasts in 22 days.  You get inoculated fast with that kind of thing.  This effort was so successful because back of it was the big name of Louis Bromfield.  Louis was one of the big authors of the day. He had won the Pulitzer Prize.  He was the youngest Pulitzer Prize winner ever.  Louis was very interested in the war effort, connecting it to the conservation movement.  He owned Malabar Farm out in Ohio and was conservation conscious long before other people thought about conservation.  Lippincott let me take off all the time I needed to help run this and get people out on farms.  We put out a few thousand people in the area.  Louise and I went out and worked on farms at George School, in Bucks County.  We supervised a bunch of school kids.  We went down on our hands and knees picking weeds out of carrots.  Your knees get awful tired real fast." 

To learn more about the mail order business, George started a mail order business club in Philadelphia.  New York had the Hundred Million Club, a group of all the people who did the heavy mailing there.  Philadelphia also needed a club like that.  They held monthly meetings at Poor Richard's restaurant, and George made speeches locally about direct mail order advertising. He was later invited to go to New York to speak to the Hundred Million Club on how to sell books by mail.  He was becoming known in the world of publishing, and soon received a job offer from Harpers in New York City.

George and Louise Pfeiffer then moved to Summit, New Jersey, within commuting distance of Manhattan.  Their second child, Doug Pfeiffer, was born there in 1946.

After two years at Harpers, George went to McGraw-Hill as advertising director for nine divisions.  It was really an impossible job, but presented a wonderful opportunity to learn about all the various aspects of advertising all kinds of books to all kinds of markets.  He also ran the Mail Order Division.  However, two years of that was enough, and George decided to look around. He was tired of the long commute from Summit, New Jersey.  He got home too late each night to see his children.  Then through the Direct Mail Advertising Association, of which he was director, George heard that Larry Lane was looking for someone to start-up a book publishing business in San Francisco, California.

George accepted the job at Sunset books, and the family moved west in 1949.  Doug was three and Lynne was seven. They were in the West at last! The first thing George did was to build redwood bookshelves for the living room in the Corte Madera house.  He loved everything about the West and Western living, and always said he never wanted to go back. 

The family moved to Los Altos Hills in 1951, when Sunset moved from San Francisco to Menlo Park.  Over the next 15 years George built Sunset Books into a large department, going from a staff of one to a staff of 50.

Initially George published Sunset how-to-do it books. Of this he said:

"We eventually published about 60 low-priced, how-to-do-it books.  That market had to be built from almost nothing.  There were 325 bookstores on the entire west coast at that time.  Out of those 325 bookstores, there were probably only about 50 worth shipping to, because most of them didn't pay their bills.  It was a tough market!  We had to develop a better market.  I personally went to nurseries, garden shops, hardware stores, and lumber yards to get them to carry Sunset books.  It was hard to convince them -- those types of stores considered books to be sissy stuff.  They were used to selling tools, spray guns, and stuff like that.  I went to all the hardware conventions!  Before that book salesmen never went to hardware conventions.  Now they do." 

Sunset later began to publish cookbooks.  "After about 60 books of the how-to-do-it books, I wanted to do some higher priced quality books.  You couldn't sell $1.95 books by mail order.  You have to have a better margin to sell a book by mail order.  Sunset had about 2,000,000 names of devoted subscribers.  There was a ready made mailing list, already on stencils. 
We started the mail order operation with cookbooks and broadened into others.  The big Sunset Cookbook published about 1960 was $8.95 - that was expensive then.  It had a lot of four-color illustrations.  Adrian Wilson designed it.  We did 80,000 copies in the first month or two.  That volume and price were unheard of at Sunset.  We built a very successful mail order business at Sunset."

Somewhat later, George became interested in publishing books about the West. He said:

"I wanted to publish western history books, and we contracted with the Western History Association to publish their magazine.  That way we gained a mailing list and got to know the head men of the Western History Association, two-thirds of whom had written books.  The Western History Association had been hoping for about 1500 subscribers.  We did a mailing, and the response was overwhelming.  We came in with 25,000 subscribers!  The first publication was in February 1965.  Since it was a quarterly, the next issue was to come out four months later.  It had started off with a great rush, and was a memorable thing to the people in those quarterly journal fields."

When George reached his 50th birthday, he decided to leave Sunset and begin his own publishing company.  At that time "The American West" magazine was gaining momentum.  Lane didn't want to keep the American West account, and allowed George to take it with him.  The Western History Association agreed to the new arrangement for the publication of their magazine. George incorporated the "American West Publishing Company" so that he could also publish Western history books --a subject near to his heart. 

He remembered:  "When the transition was complete, the American West Magazine was managed from my new office in Palo Alto.  The publishing company grew from Louise and I alone, to a staff of thirty-six at the high point."

"We owned the book business separately.  The Western History Association didn't have money to publish books, nor the ability to gamble.  Publishing a book is a gamble; we took the risk ourselves.  As the business grew, Louise and I had to raise the money for the big books by putting a mortgage on our house.  The books were about Western history and Western states and nearly all written from the Western point of view.  I was mighty proud of those books, and they were good books, they were books selling for $14.95 -- it would be would be $30.00 or more now." (in 1984 at the time of the interview)

In 1966 George also began the management of two small, local publishing companies, Science and Behavior Books and Consulting Psychologists Press.  That same year he began distribution of Kodansha books in the United States.  Kodansha International USA was a California corporation, with both George and Louise on the Board of Directors.  They greatly enjoyed their travels to Japan on business for Kodansha, a trip each year for about eight years in all, as well as the friends they made. They had always wanted to travel, especially to the Far East. 

   In 1975, George sold the American West Publishing Company and entered into an active retirement. He consulted about publishing out of his home office in Los Altos Hills.  He also published two corporate histories, Castle & Cooke and Meet Me at the St. Francis. 

 George also began volunteer consulting, working at first through the Retired Executive Volunteers out of the Palo Alto Senior Center.  He helped nonprofit organizations, advising them on how to design and write brochures, choose type, create a mailing list, and raise funds. He recalled:

"All the little nonprofits have to do that kind of thing, and they don't know how.  It's great after spending your life working for money to be able to work for nothing.  It's a thrill and very rewarding to receive their praise and thanks for helping.  They don't need to learn all of the business of publishing.  They just need help to get out a booklet or to fit type.  The principles of mail order are helpful to them in their fund raising.  They need to learn how to write copy, and things like that.   When you give them that kind of help and they don't have to pay for it, well, they write you the nicest letters!  You wouldn't get that if they paid you money."

George was generous with time and advice for writers and would-be publishers. For him, it was a labor of love. He said he found it very rewarding to be able to give advice and to help people who aspired to work in publishing. Certainly, he was proud to have been able to help the now-famous author, Betty Bao Lord,  meet the publisher of her first book.  Betty's parents were family friends of the Pfeiffers. As she was beginning her first book, Betty asked "Uncle George” for advice.  One of the things he told her was not to sign a contract without letting him check it first -- he didn't want her to get stuck with some small publisher. 

In a chance meeting in Washington, D.C., George introduced Betty to Cass Canfield of Harpers, who published all the big Washington books.  He said he would like to do the book and that he had a good editor for her.  Betty was elated. George remembered:

"Betty called me up from Washington before she signed that contract and said, 'Uncle George, I have a contract here and I want to read it to you before I sign it.'  I told her if it was a Harper contract she could trust Cass Canfield.  But she wanted to read it to me, a long contract on a long distance phone call.  When she got down to the 'Royalties' section, I said, 'I object, he's giving you too much.  After all, I'm a stockholder of Harpers!'  Well, we had a good laugh.  She did well with that book and it started her writing career.  Eighth Moon  sold a few hundred thousand copies, was a best seller, was published in about 15 languages."

George Pfeiffer was not only a publisher of books, he was a printer. Printing was his hobby for forty years.  As a child, I loved to stand beside him and watch while he set type and explained to me the finer points of printing. My earliest memories of him include visiting his print shop, which was filled with the peculiar smell of ink, and the loud, mysterious, somewhat-dangerous-to-small-hands machine --all warmed by a little wood-burning stove. 

In the 1984 interview he told the California Historical Society, that:

"In 1956 I bought an old letter press and learned to set type and print.  I've now got two old printing presses and about a 180 cases of type out there.  I hand set type and print things like wedding announcements for neighbor's children, birth announcements, stationery, or even wine labels.  My hobby fit in with my profession, and I actually got some design experience which was later helpful professionally.  I taught my son Doug to print when he was very young - he stood on a box to set type.  He is a publisher today in Oregon."

"My friend Lew Osborne introduced me to a group of hobby printers, and we formed the Moxon Chappel.  We aspired to fine quality printing on beautiful paper.  We met every month for years and critiqued each other's printing projects."

Over the years George and Louise traveled a lot, and were able to travel more after he retired.  Their first trip, of course, had been their  move from New York to California.  Later, they traveled for Sunset to Australia and New Zealand.  Then came the trips to Japan for Kodansha.  After George retired, they enjoyed many more  interesting trips.  Among the places they traveled are China, Egypt, Alaska, England, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Tunisia, France, and up the St. Lawrence River.  Louise Pfeiffer painted many beautiful watercolors of scenes from these places. These paintings have adorned the walls of our family homes, loved by all --especially George, my Grackie. He never tired of showing them to any one of us, always expressing delight and a deep admiration for his wife's talent and the richness of their life together. 

Among the many people George and Louise met during their earlier business travels, can be counted the valuable friendships that transcended business. During the years with Kodansha, George worked closely with Mr. Saburo Nobuki, who has send a remembrance of him to us by e-mail. Because Mr. Nobuki cannot be here to share his memories of George, I will read his message for you:

"I well remember my first meeting with George.  He and Louise appeared in my office at Kodansha International in Tokyo on an early spring day in 1965.  He carried an English translation of The Japanese Buddhist Prints published by us, which he had purchased in San Francisco.  He said to me 'Your titles are all unique, very specialized, and most beautifully done.  They are not the best for the bookstore market, but they are ideal for the mail order market!'   His publishing strategies were professional, practical, creative and inspiring.  I asked George to handle our books as the Vice President of Kodansha International, USA, established on May 6, 1966.  Since then he has become one of my best friends in life -- so many fruitful associations between us -- two companies and two families.  I have always regarded George as challenging, honest, patient, sweet, brave, and properly stubborn to his ideology."

In 1988, Mr. Nobuki called the Pfeiffers to ask a favor.  The daughter of an old friend of his had just married and would be living near Stanford for a year while her husband was  a visiting scholar.  They would need some advise in getting started in a strange country.  Thus, Hiroshi and Maki Asano became part of the family.  They too have sent an e-mail, which I would like to share:

"We started our life in California just five days after our marriage.  George and Louise helped us find a car and a place to live.  They advised us on how to live in the U.S. They are really American parents for us.  George loved to tease -- and Maki thought that was very funny.  She especially thought it was funny when he would sneak up on Maki with candy or sweets in his hands, saying "Eat this, you need to put on some weight!"  George loved talking in Japanese.  He would usually say "Thank you" and "You are welcome" in Japanese with a funny gesture.  George's kindness and hospitality made our stay in the U.S. wonderful."

Before I left for Grad school in 1994, I spent almost a year with Grandma and Grackie in their Los Altos home. Although a somewhat difficult transition for me, living there was a wonderful experience in many many ways. I was able to really enjoy the house with them right before they left for the Forum, and more importantly, I was able to learn more about each of my grandparents than I might have. 

Grackie --he liked to go for walks. We would occasionally take walks together in the hills he loved, and had taught me to love as a place of family history as well as beauty. He never ceased to marvel at what he saw around him, commenting always on things like the eucalyptus he had thought so strange years ago when he had first come to California.  During that year, he also spent a lot of time counseling me --listening to my plans and cheering me on to whatever success and happiness I may find. 

In June of 1994, right before I left for school, Grackie presented me with something he had made --something he had set type and printed for me. On a thick, cream colored paper, an ornate border, printed in red, enframes the words: 
 

I in turn want to thank Grackie for being a fun grandfather, a great teacher, a dear friend, and a one-of-a-kind Grackie.