![]() She says the techniques included hitting the streets, selling door to door and getting the product into people’s hands to build interest. “They were able, over the next five or six years, to find some marketing techniques to really help them succeed,” says Mikelson. Just three years later, they ran out of money but found people willing to lend them funds to stay afloat. They declared at the time that “children are the world’s most important people.” Highlights’ early content included the “Hidden Pictures” puzzle along with other features, stories and illustrations. They left Children’s Activities (which their business would eventually acquire) to start their own publication, Highlights for Children. Together they advocated for child development, writing and lecturing on the subject and training other teachers while working for a magazine called Children’s Activities.īy 1946, they wanted to take their educational point of view and aesthetic to the masses. They met at Ursinus College, where both trained to help children, Garry as a child psychologist and Caroline as a teacher. My sense of resilience and optimism is that no matter what happens, we can get through it - this can’t be as tough as what they had to do in 1960.” ![]() “I think the family’s commitment was only made deeper by that tragedy. “The leader who took on rebuilding the team managed the company and moved forward,” says Johnson, the founders’ great-grandson. says the family and the company are still affected by the deaths - and so is he. ![]() Though the crash occurred nine years before he was born, current family CEO Kent Johnson Jr. and Caroline were reassured the company’s future was in good hands and the business turned attention back to a growing marketplace. Once new executives were put in place, Garry Sr. At that time, she says, an aunt, an uncle and two of her cousins joined the board of directors and the editorial office. They literally drove ,” says Mikelson, the family and company historian and archivist. “My grandparents would simply not let go. and Caroline began transition plans anew. She and her siblings moved in with an uncle in Texas, and Garry Sr. Instead, says Pat Mikelson, one of Garry and Mary’s five children, the family rallied. The company could have faced the same fate. There were no survivors from either flight. On a December morning that year, Garry Jr., Mary and non-family vice president Cyril Ewart were traveling from Ohio to New York for a business meeting when their plane collided with another over Staten Island. founders Garry and Caroline Myers were in their 70s and transitioning leadership to their son and daughter-in-law, Garry Jr. There were a couple of false starts in the early days - times when the company struggled financially and even faced a family tragedy that would have ended a lesser business. However, the magazine wasn’t always successful. Today Highlights is published all over the world, in print and digitally, in addition to Hello, for children under the age of 2, and High Five, for those between 2 and 6. Seeking out images in a “Hidden Pictures” puzzle or pondering the behavior of recurring characters Goofus and Gallant just seems like entertainment. Highlights magazine, revered by young readers and their parents since its founding nearly 75 years ago, presents educational content in format so subtle that children don’t even notice they’re learning.
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