[5] As part of its effort to acknowledge prominent people who had been previously overlooked, in 2018 The New York Times published a belated obituary for her.[6]. She took the paint with her to the office which made her work easier than usual. This cookie is set by Twitter to identify and track the website visitor. It was a profession that used to be a reliable path to the middle class, by Heather Long in the Washington Post last year. var hp_try = 0; She turned her whiteout, Liquid Paper, into an. if(typeof hp_interval == 'undefined') { LPC exhibited extraordinary growth in the first ten years, and by 1965, LPC sold some 133,000 bottles of product, with annual recurring sales soaring. But she was loved because of her creative and tremendous work. When I found out that talent wouldnt support me, then I realized that I would have to give that up, she said in interview for the Business Archives Project at North Texas State University in 1980. When the other secretaries realized how well the invention worked, they flooded Graham with requests for their own supplies. var captchaApiScriptEl = document.createElement('script'); }; By 1964, the production of Liquid Paper grew 10x, to 5k bottles/week; in 1967, the company notched its first $1m in sales (~$8m today). It stores the last sync time to avoid continually repeating the syncing process. By 1957, Graham was selling 100 bottles per month to her colleagues. Bette Graham was now wealthy, with fabulous jewelry and a Rolls-Royce. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. var el = wrappingDiv.getElementsByClassName(className)[0]; Her birthplace is Dallas, Texas, where her parents, Jesse McMurray and Christine Duval, used to live. Over the next few years, her health declined rapidly. }); She was left alone to take care of her only son, Michael singlehandedly. setHiddenFieldValueFromUtm(wrappingDiv, sp, 'funnel-s4', 's4', ''); She solicited wholesalers and traveled from Dallas to San Antonio and Houston on weekends to market her product. $('input.hp_ts').val(hp_ts); She was a single mom from Texas who had a brilliant idea while working a 9-to-5 job as a secretary.
She died on May 12, 1980, at the age of 56 years. As told by Bette in a 1977 speech she gave to the New Enterprise Club at Harvard Business School, LPC had an annualized ROI of 40% in 1975 and an annual advertising budget of $1.5 million (or $4.5 million in 2020.) The Today in missed opportunities, Snapchat announced a GPT-powered personalized avatar named My AI (and not SnapChatGPT). The quick-thinking Graham mimicked their technique by using a white, water-based tempera paint to cover her typing errors. Raised a Baptist, Graham converted to Christian Science in 1942, and this faith inspired the development of her corporate "Statement of Policy". if (false) { This cookie keeps track of a visitor's identity. To make ends meet, she found work as a secretary at Texas Bank and Trust, where she earned $300/month (~$36k/year in todays money). Ensures data from subsequent visits to the same site are attributed to the same user ID. if(hp_ts < 3 && hp_try < 1) { The bitterness remained, and Robert Graham maneuvered to have the company bar her from making any corporate decisions. I write about the power of negotiation and adaptive leadership. It's also employed as a functional fluid in arts and crafts from blacksmithing to jewelry tomodeling kits. Its like a plant that is rooted in the ground. Nesmith married Robert Graham in 1962, and he joined the business as well. Most easily identified by his trademark blue wool hat with pompom, Nesmith fashioned a diversified career within music and also in film. She moved forward anyway, poring over books in the public library to study formulas for tempera paint, and working with a chemistry teacher to improve the consistency of her product. At 19 years of age, she got married to Warren Nesmith. Kidadl is independent and to make our service free to you the reader we are supported by advertising. And thats why we built Trends to show you up-and-coming market opportunities about to explode. Identifies a new users first session. But for decades, being part of a secretarial pool was an important employment option for millions of women. }); The product she would eventually create Liquid Paper, a white correction fluid used to conceal handwritten or printed typos would become one of the worlds most popular and enduring office supplies. With a never give up soul, Graham went on with her experiment till when she came up with a picture-perfect combination. She continued to refine her recipe in her kitchen laboratory, which was based on a formula for tempura paint she found at the local library, with assistance from a paint company employee and a chemistry teacher at a local school. In 1962, Graham married a frozen-food salesman, Robert Graham, who took an increasingly active role in the company, including a seat on the board. var b = document.cookie.match('(^|[^;]+)\\s*' + a + '\\s*=\\s*([^;]+)'); When her husband returned home from World War II, the couple got divorced and Graham was left to single-handedly raise her child. Bette Nesmith Graham didnt tell anyone about the first few bottles of her whitish concoction. More interesting Facts Bette Nesmith Graham Worked as a bank secretary Later she rose to the executive secretary Some bosses admonished her from using it. These remarkable employee benefits were further memorialized in the 1980 movie 9to5, about three secretaries that took over their company. 58. The tenacious woman managed to hold on to 49% of the company. Graham poses for a photo later in life (University of North Texas archives). These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. Used to monitor the technical information and use of devices that connect to our website to protect it from malicious traffic. This included positions in management and sales, not just operations. In 1979, she sold her company to the Gillette Corporation for $47.5 million. You have to face fears and doubts constantly. Bettes decent life and humble background made her not to step a foot in high school. American typist and inventor of Liquid Paper (19241980), "From The Folks Who Gave You Liquid Paper", "Graham, Bette Clair McMurray (19241980)", "Overlooked No More: Bette Nesmith Graham, Who Invented Liquid Paper", Bette Nesmith Graham, Liquid Paper Inventor, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bette_Nesmith_Graham&oldid=1129392668, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using infobox person with multiple spouses, Pages using infobox person with multiple parents, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 25 December 2022, at 03:03. She could see women who were at the highest places as executive assistants, but they didnt have decision making power. Building a company of this magnitude alone would have been remarkable, but Nesmith shared with me a conversation he had with Bettes staff after she passed away in 1980. Mistake Out became Liquid Paper. Linkedin sets this cookie. She was barred from making corporate decisions, lost access to the premises, and the company changed her formula so she would lose royalties. captchaVersion.name = 'g-recaptcha-response-v2';We're committed to your privacy. Your privacy is important to us. As much as she wanted to help her kindred secretaries, Nesmith also noted that she, as a single mother and creative person, was equally motivated to find ways to empower working women. It has grown by increasing productivity and by stretching capabilities to meet the demand, she said. While that contemporary role might involve managing calendars and virtual meetings instead of fetching coffee, one thing remains timeless: the profession is almost entirely occupied by women.