9/11/07, Our Second Anniversary
We created the MadAve Journal to heal a great loss in our lives and on Madison Avenue. Chris Hanley was a dear friend who will be missed forever.
Click on his photo above to learn about him.
Once a period of grieving passed, we had nowhere else to go, except to think more about Chris and even more about the past, which led to even more grieving. This is not uncommon.
Then one day we realized that since Chris was such a creative person, he would have wanted us to get on with it and get back into what we had been doing together; learning from and enjoying the culture of life on Madison Avenue!
The culture of MadAve, the agency life, the ideas, the creative, the production, the research, the media, the account execs, the clients... the buzz... and of course the one thing that Madison Avenue has and always will, the risk! It's one of the reasons why we're so bewildered by AMCTV's MAD MEN.
We came up with the MadAve Journal in 2005 and dedicated it to him.
The Mad Ave Journal was a risk. It almost didn't make it. Back in 2004, the first attempt was a complete disaster. Then we brushed the dust from the street off ourselves and took another stab at it. That brings us here, two years later. Madison Avenue will never be the same without Hanley. Neither will we due to his absence - as well as his presence - in the Journal.
The Editors
One story
The autumn of 2001 was extremely warm. Deep into November, the temperatures were still '80 degrees. On most late afternoons - working at Tribal in an office right across the street from St Patrick's - we could hear the Cathedral bells toll their soft, sacred melodies.
That season, even the most hurried New Yorker rushing down Madison Avenue seemed to slow down. You had to. The Police would stop all traffic. Everyone knew what it meant. We all tried to get used to it.
On one of those sunny days Delores, one of our tougher clients came into town from Chicago, where by November the Second City was cold and windy. But it was so warm in Manhattan and in the office that we had to open up the conference room windows to get some fresh air in.
After a couple of hours in the conference room, with the windows open Delores sat back and commented about the church bells. She breathed a sigh of relaxation, stretched a minute and said, "Oh, that is sooo nice to hear. Does the church do that everyday?"
Nervous, we looked at each other. We had gotten so used to it we hadn't even heard it. Being from out of town she was not used to them like we were. There was silence in the room. No one said anything. Finally, one of our braver creative guys spoke up and said, "No, those are bells that St. Patty's rings when there's a funeral mass for one of the cops or firemen, who are being recovered from Ground Zero."
"Oh my," she said. Startled, she sat up like a bolt shooting up her spine. The New York trip had been the first time she was back in the Big Apple since 9/11. She took a deep breath, tried to recompose herself and said in a cracked voice, "Let's move on."
You needed a chainsaw to cut the tension in the room at that moment. But we all knew that we most likely would not move on. Because once the bells ended, the bagpipes would then begin to play. Bouncing off the MadAve skyscrapers, echoing down 50th and 51st, being just 10 floors above the street, their sad piercing siren began screetching in our ears.
Delores froze. Her nerves of steel were no match against the bagpipes. We looked down, held by collective breath and then looked up at her.
All the blood had rushed out of her face. She looked around, began to tear up and then without a word she stood up, walked out of the conference room and into the bathroom.
