Glory (Meehan) Read

Writer, Manhattan PR executive, and longtime Cliftonite

Glory Read, an author and pioneering Manhattan public relations executive, died at home in Clifton, N.J.  She was 97.

Mrs. Read began her career as a North Carolina journalist and became a writer for the news bureau and public relations office at Duke University, her alma mater, before moving to her husband’s native New Jersey.

There, she continued her life-long writing career, as an advertising copywriter, a technical editor, a magazine writer, and a syndicated newspaper columnist before becoming a founder of the PR agency that she headed as president for some 20 years.

The agency was the recipient of the prestigious Silver Anvil Award from the Public Relations Society of America for her work for Johnson & Johnson. 

Her memoir, “Everything Will Be Alright: An Alzheimer’s Memoir,” chronicles the 11 years that she and her late husband, William M. Read III, shared life amid his disease, a work that has been praised as a love story to remember and one that changed the way the disease is viewed.

Her husband, a longtime Passaic Valley Water Commission chemist whom she met while they were students at Duke University, died in 2001; they were married for 49 years.

At her Manhattan firm, Public Relations Counsel Inc., she was the creator of the “Baby Yourself” public relations campaign for her Johnson & Johnson client, a campaign lauded in trade journals as “a marketing coup” for igniting adult usage of baby products during a time of a declining birth rate.

A pioneer in combining a career and a family, she was an example for other women. 

She served on the board of the New York Cosmetic Executive Women and was a member of the Public Relations Society of America. Her biography appeared in “Who’s Who in the East,” “Who’s Who in Public Relations,” “Who’s Who of American Women,” and “Foremost Women in Communications.”

Mrs. Read was a trustee of St. Peter’s Haven, a homeless family shelter and food pantry in Clifton, N.J., and she was a long-term member of The Write Group in Montclair, N.J. Her civic activities reached back to the World War II era, when she was a USO volunteer and a Red Cross nurse’s aide.

Born Glory Meehan in Baltimore, Md., on May 8, 1925, she spent her childhood in many different places. She has lived in Clifton, N.J. for more than 60 years and called it her hometown. 

In addition to her husband, she was predeceased by a son, William M. Read IV., a designer and creative director.

She is survived by her younger son, Philip, a longtime New Jersey daily newspaper journalist who is now editor and publisher of a magazine in North Carolina; his wife, the Rev. Deacon Nancy Rees Read; four grandchildren, Lauren (Michael) Koslow, Philip Jr, Leanna (Joseph) Urcinas, and Keirsten (Darren Templeton); her eldest son's widow, Donna Kraemer Read; and five great-grandchildren. She is also survived by a brother-in-law, Jacques Read of Georgetown, Washington, D.C.; two nephews, Jac and Jeremy Read of Silver Spring, Md.; a niece, Tory Haeselbarth, and her son, Wesley, of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

Visitation is at the Bizub Quinlan Funeral Home, 1313 Van Houten Avenue, Clifton on Sunday, February 5, 2023 from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm. The funeral service will be held Monday, February 6, 2023 at 11:00 am at the funeral home followed interment at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Upper Montclair. In lieu of flowers, please consider a contribution to St. Peter’s Haven, 380 Clifton Avenue, Clifton, NJ 07011 (www.saintpetershaven.org). Visit www.bizubquinlan.com to leave condolences on the Tribute Wall section of the obituary.

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