William (Bill) J. P. Smith, Jr., 75, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1994 after his doctor dismissed it a year before as, “Probably a cyst that we will watch.” Bill had a modified radical mastectomy, 30 lymph nodes removed, and was treated with Tamoxifin for five years. There was no history of cancer in the family, and he has had no reoccurrence. The irony of this is that Bill was part of a team at Xerox Corporation that introduced xeroradiography, an advanced mammography procedure for the early detection of breast cancer in 1969 at Hutzel Hospital in Detroit. Twenty five years later, it was his turn.

On behalf of women, Bill has been a fund raiser, and is the subject of two books, Living with Breast Cancer, the Story of 39 Women and One Man by Perry Colemore and Lisa Adelsberger, and messages from Somewhere, Inspiring Stories of Life after 60, by award winning author, the late Harriet Mary Savit. He has also written an autobiographical screenplay on his experience.

In Bill’s professional life, he doesn’t think the word “mediocrity” should be part of the business vocabulary. He feels compromise is a fast forward to the word. Bill also doesn’t believe that coming in second should be celebrated. It makes you a loser. He’s carried this business acumen throughout his career in the world of advertising and public relations, and has handed down to his college students. Long before it was fashionable, Bill help pioneer integrated marketing communications, account planning, the video news release and event marketing, always echoing the words of Bill Bernbach, the Father of the Creative Revolution, “Great advertising is risk.” “Live at the bleeding edge” is Bill’s favorite theme, along with “Think nonlinear.”

As a business partner, he has been associated with such companies and schools as Xerox and award winning TV, Data General, Harvard Medical School, Coca-Cola, Team McLaren in motor vehicle racing, Digital Equipment, U.S. Olympic Biomedicine Organization, The Florida State University, the America’s Cup, and US West, as well as “Hall of Fame” agencies, including Ammariti & Puris, George Lois, Inc., Scali McCabe Sloves, Doyle Dane Bernbach, Needum Harper Steers, and Papert Koenig Lois. Bill’s body of work has been seen around the world in print, and on TV, film and the internet, and is mentioned in Tracy Kidder’s epilogue in the best seller and Pulitzer Prize winning, Soul of a New Machine.

For 20 years, Bill has taken what he learned in business to schools of higher learning, teaching such subjects as integrated marketing communications, account planning, journalism, public relations, advertising, global marketing, and event marketing. Schools include The Florida State University, Emerson College, Pepperdine University, Northeastern University, Citrus College and Azusa Pacific University.

A former U.S. Marine and working journalist, Bill is a product of Florida State, where he received his undergraduate degree in journalism, and from Boston University and New York University from which he holds a masters degree, majoring in public relations. His interests include motor vehicle racing, stamp and art collecting, human behavior, cooking, photography, jazz and sports fishing. He resides and works in Tallahassee, Florida with his wife and business partner, Kathy Franklin-Smith, someone he knew 47 years ago, and who found him on the internet in 2002 by going to the FSU web site. When they’re not running Huckleberry Finn Tomorrow, an integrated marketing communications consultancy, Bill writes screenplays, shorts stories, and is well into his autobiography, while Kathy, a graphic designer, is a serious fine arts painter. He summarizes his life like this: “I finally found out what my sole purpose has been. It is simply to serve as a warning to others, having come from the Mad Men era.”