Parker, Lore

Lore Lionel Parker worked as a copywriter for a number of advertising agencies, and with many of the key creative managers and art directors during what has come to be called the creative revolution in modern advertising: Bill Bernbach, Gene Federico, Bob Gage, Helmut Krone, Phyllis Robinson, Bert Steinhauser, and Bill Taubin. Early in her career, she was known by her maiden name, Lore Lionel, but later by her married name, Lore Parker.

Of her life, Parker writes: I was born in 1926 in Leipzig, Germany, and already as a child wrote poetry--in German, of course. Then came Hitler, the ever-worsening persecution of German Jews, and finally in 1939, my family's hair-breadth escape to England. We arrived penniless, but my brother and I were beneficiaries of Britain's Kindertransport initiative. The British Government had undertaken to accept several thousand Jewish children from Germany and Austria, and place them in the homes of British families who had volunteered to temporarily adopt them. I was adopted by a Girls' High School in the North of England, and lived with the Headmistress, the English mistress, and the Latin mistress in the house they shared. Soon I was writing poems, short stories, and prize-winning essays in English. I had fallen in love with the English language.

During the London Blitz, 1943-1944, I worked at the BBC as a bilingual secretary, so when i finally came to the USA in 1945, I spoke and wrote BBC English. The day after our arrival in New York, I went to an employment agency and asked for a job as a secretary--preferably somewhere where I might eventually be able to write. My English accent didn't hurt. They had two openings: one was with the New York Times, which paid $22.50 a week; the other was with Paris and Peart, an advertising agency--whatever that was. It paid $27.50 a week, and that's how I became a copywriter instead of a journalist.