Stanley Howard Brams, Detroit Labor Expert, Auto Journalist, Dies
25 December 1999
Stanley Howard Brams, Detroit Labor Expert, Auto Journalist, Dies
DETROIT and ATLANTA, Dec. 25 -- Stanley Howard Brams, a
well-known journalist, labor-relations expert and Detroit entrepreneur, died
of cardiac failure on December 25, 1999, in Atlanta. He was 89.
He had a lifelong writing career, beginning as the school editor of the
Bay City Times-Tribune at age 14 (at the salary of $6 a week), and after
completing college, as an advertising copy writer for the J.L. Hudson Company,
Frank & Seder Company, and Sears, Roebuck & Company in Detroit.
His labor-relations experiences included establishing in 1945 "Labor
Trends," an internationally circulated newsletter that he published for more
than 40 years; being one of the founding members of the national Society of
Professionals in Dispute Resolution (SPIDR); serving as president of the
Detroit Chapter of the Industrial Relations Research Association, 1952; and
labor arbitrating as a panel member on all the national and local
labor-relations agencies from 1971 until his death.
He established Press Relations Newswire in Detroit in 1961 and set up
similar facilities in Washington, D.C., Cleveland and Atlanta. Using
private-circuit Teletypewriters supplied by Western Union and local Bell
companies, these news-distribution bureaus were then a pioneering method of
delivering press releases to newspapers, radio, TV and trade magazines and
journals. In 1985, the four wire-service bureaus were sold to PR Newswire of
New York City, the originator of the "PR wire" concept. These four newswires
were the most commercially successful of his numerous entrepreneurial
ventures.
As well as labor, Mr. Brams wrote about the automotive industry his entire
life and became recognized in the 1980s as the oldest automotive journalist,
often referred to as the "dean of auto writers" by his colleagues in Detroit.
He attended his first auto-show preview -- a Detroit tradition still practiced
today -- to view the 1936 Plymouths in the autumn of 1935 as a correspondent
for Transradio Press Service.
He proudly carried the privileged responsibility of saying "Thank you,
Mr. Ford," as a close to all Henry Ford II's news conferences at Ford Motor
Company headquarters during the 1960s and 1970s. Henry Ford II was a friend
and frequent player at poker games hosted or attended by Mr. Brams.
He wrote on many other subjects and sold scores of articles to magazines
including Reader's Digest, The New Yorker, Parents, Saveur, The New York Times
Magazine, Nation's Business, The Spur, Mechanix Illustrated, Michigan Motor
News (now Michigan Living), Ford Times and others. For several years in the
1960s he wrote the "Automotive Industry" section of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica yearbook after Charles E. Kettering relinquished that assignment.
He was the editor of Ward's Automotive Reports from 1936 to 1940; the Detroit
Editor for Iron Age magazine and Detroit Bureau Manager for McGraw-Hill from
1946-52; and the editor and publisher of Michigan Beverage News from 1986 to
1989.
His affiliations included the Society of Automotive Engineers, Engineering
Society of Detroit, Economic Club of Detroit, Society of Older Graduates and
John Jay Associates of Columbia College; board member of the National
Automotive History Collection of the Detroit Public Library (chairman
1990-1992); longtime member and past president of The Prismatic Club; and
member, Customer Advisory Council of Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Michigan,
Region II, since 1982. He was also a founding member of The Detroit Press
Club in 1952.
Mr. Brams was born May 14, 1910 in Greenville, Michigan. He was educated
at Columbia College of Columbia University, New York. At the height of the
Depression, he dropped out of Columbia in his third year there but was
included with the Class of 1931 for reunion activities.
During his lifetime, he traveled extensively in Europe, North Africa,
Asia, South America and the Southern Hemisphere. In 1986, he spent three
months circumnavigating the globe and was a board member of the Detroit
Chapter of the Circumnavigators Club.
A longtime resident of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Mr. Brams is survived by
two sons, John Brian Brams of Portland, Ore., and James Osborne Brams of
Atlanta; a stepson, David Lee Shannon of West Bloomfield, Mich.;
10 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
For those wishing to make memorial tributes to Mr. Brams, the family has
requested contributions to local AIDS organizations or AIDS-related charities.