ABSTRACT
Edwin Earl Newsom was born in Wellman, Iowa, on December 13, 1897, the fourth of six children of Reverend John Edward and Emma Day Newsom. He grew up in the rolling, fertile countryside of early 20th century Iowa, where his father, a Methodist preacher, served the congregations of several southeastern Iowa towns. The Newsom family was a family of teachers, ministers, and musicians — a family that stimulated a lifelong intellectual curiosity and principled values in the future counselor. Newsom, like five of his pioneer peers who helped create and build the profession of public relations, was a product of the Midwest and agricultural America that would be overtaken by industrial America at the turn of the century. Like George Parker, Pendleton Dudley, Carl Byoir, Steve Hannagan, and John Wiley Hill, Newsom, in time, became an influential adviser to corporate giants as they coped with the complex problems of the Depression, World War II, and the turbulent postwar industrial era.
