There was an old TV commercial that proclaimed, “You’ve come a long way, baby, to get where you’ve got to today.”
Nothing could be more true of Glenda O’Tool Potts, who retired from Leader Publications last week. She has been the driving force behind an award-winning advertising staff that has made possible the paper’s steady growth over the past 28 years.
She’d sail out the door early each week saying, “Well, I guess I’ll get out there and see about making some hamburger money.”
Because the number of advertisements that are sold determines the paper’s size each week, there was anxiety waiting for her – and the other stalwart warriors on our ad staff – to work their magic.
But then she’d bustle back through the office door at the end of the week, her hands full of orders, and proclaim, “We’ve got a real honker this week!”
Glenda Mae, as she is affectionately known, is one of the three founding members of Leader Publications, which was formed in 1994.
“I’ve told the story a million times about how Patrick Martin, Pam LaPlant and I drew up our business plan sitting around my kitchen table,” she said.
The Hillsboro-area native had returned to the area a few years before, a divorced single mother of two young children.
“I had a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old and about 50 bucks in my pocket,” she recalled. “Art Yarbrough with the De Soto paper gave me my first chance in newspaper advertising.”
In the early days of her 39 years in the newspaper business, she remembers setting actual lead type, then later a “dot system” style of mocking up the paper and after that cardboard “flats” for each set of pages.
“We’d sit there nights until midnight, designing ads,” she said. “And then you had to wax and paste on every little piece of art, every column of type. There were no computers.
“I’ve been blessed to see it all – the old and the new – and it’s just been such a wonderful career.”
Glenda, who turns 70 this fall, plans to enjoy time with Terry, her husband of 25 years, her two children and the eight grandchildren from their blended families who call her “Oma.”
But leaving the Leader is not easy. She speaks fondly of the family-first culture she and the others strove to create from the very first issue.
“This place, these people, have been like my family over the years,” she said. “They have helped me grow, helped me raise my children. My family is embedded here.”
Glenda has fond memories of how her dad, the late Glenn Dickemann, was an enthusiastic champion of the fledgling paper.
“My dad would walk up and down the streets, delivering papers and talking to people,” she said. “He loved it.”
Community service has always been part of the Leader’s business model.
“I’m really proud that this company has helped support the wants and needs of the community,” Glenda said. “We’ve watched our Jefferson County communities grow along with the business, from the college to the YMCA to the hospital to the different chambers of commerce. There have been so many organizations I’ve been involved with, so many boards I’ve sat on over the years.
“And it’s wonderful that we have so much respect for each other in the business community. We have people call us and say, ‘I have an idea; what do you think?’ and we make it work, together.”
She points to the annual Leader Holiday Dinner, held with Jefferson College and its culinary department, as a shining example of such a collaboration.
“I don’t think people really knew how great the college’s culinary department was,” she said. “Now they’re on the map. We helped open the doors for them to do a lot of great things with the students.”
She said she also is grateful for the relationship between the paper and the county’s chambers of commerce.
“We’ve been so involved with things like Arnold Days, Twin City Days, the De Soto Fall Festival, the De Soto Home Show,” she said. “We have partnered with so many events and projects with the
Hillsboro Community Civic Center. We have helped the chambers make money at times when they didn’t have much else going.”
Glenda said she thinks being part of the Leader simply was her destiny.
“I just don’t have the words to say how I feel about the support we’ve gotten for almost 30 years,” she said. “I think God put me in the position. This career chose me.
“I am proud to be a founder of the company, proud of where it’s been and where it’s going. I’ve loved my career, all the people, and so many of them have grown with me. I just want to say thanks to everyone for being part of my life.”
Good luck and best wishes for a happy retirement, Glenda. We couldn’t have done it without you.
