Doris Willens

Her mother was born Badana Heskin in 1895, and she married Samuel Wilensky (or Wolensky).

Her older brother was wealthy political donor and Nuclear Freeze activist Harold Willens (1914–2003).

Willens' Jewish family came from the northern Chernigov region of Ukraine.

Because of rising antisemitic violence, her father and his younger brother Ben traveled to the United States in July 1914 just as World War I was starting.

The two men settled in The Bronx supported by the lantzman community.

Back in Chernigov, her mother raised a son, Harold.

Mother and son barely escaped death in the Kiev pogroms (1919), and in 1922 they paid a smuggler "mule" who was guiding a group of Jews out of Europe.

Doris Willens (August 15, 1924 – July 15, 2021) was an American singer-songwriter, journalist, advertising executive and author.

The family reunited in The Bronx, where Doris was born in 1924.

At the urging of her mother's brother to join him, the family moved to Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, in 1927.

Her mother, known as "Bobbie", was a garment worker, and her father was a business agent for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.

Willens attended Manual Arts High School, then entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to get a bachelor's degree in English.

She was the chief editor of the Daily Bruin in 1944–1945 during her senior year, and her boyfriend, another English major, was future broadcaster Bill Stout.

Willens returned to New York to enroll in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, earning a scholarship in 1946 from the Woman's Press Club of New York City.

Willens was a newspaper reporter in Minnesota, hired in 1947 by the Minneapolis Tribune as the first woman to cover the police beat.

She competed for scoops against 24-year-old Harry Reasoner who worked for rival newspaper The Minneapolis Times.

Willens' beau from UCLA followed her to Minneapolis and began working at the Times; Willens and Stout were briefly married, from mid-1947 to mid-1948.

When Willens appeared at the police station to cover the law enforcement news, the police detectives complained that they would have to clean up their language in front of a woman, but Captain Gene Bernath was supportive, accommodating Willens' schedule by holding news briefs in the afternoon.

After her divorce, Willens started a romance with 28-year-old Milton L. Kaplan, assistant city editor at the Tribune.

In 1948, Kaplan accepted a position with William Randolph Hearst's International News Service in New York City.

Willens married him in May 1949.

In 1950, Kaplan was assigned the London office, bringing Willens to London for five years.

Their son Jeffrey was born in London on May 5, 1954.

In 1955, Kaplan and Willens took a flat in Brooklyn.

Moving back to New York City, Kaplan rose through various executive positions in Hearst's organization, including a stint as Washington Bureau Chief, 1963–66.

Returning once again to New York City, Kaplan's career culminated as chief of King Features Syndicate.

In 1966 the ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) hired her as their director of public relations.

In that role, she penned a wide variety of texts, including speeches for executives, company annual reports, and a musical salute for an internal party thrown every five years.

She rose to the rank of vice president.

Willens published the DDB News internally, conducting interviews and reporting on events.

At the close of 1972, he died of a heart attack at age 52 while skiing in the Catskill Mountains.

Willens was employed by the New York Journal-American and became the first woman columnist covering the advertising agency industry.

She wrote a handful of musicals and plays including Piano Bar in 1978.

She was recognized in 1982 by the Academy of Women Leaders (AWL) for her "achievements... and contributions to the success of other women."

The AWL is a program of the YWCA of the City of New York.

She was a member of the Baby Sitters children's folk music group along with Alan Arkin and Lee Hays, and she wrote Lonesome Traveler: The Life of Lee Hays (1988), describing his career with the Almanac Singers and the Weavers.

Willens worked for the New York Journal-American as a columnist covering Madison Avenue advertising agencies.

For nearly two decades she ran public relations for ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach, ending as vice president.

Later, she punctured the reputation of William Bernbach by writing about him from an insider's perspective.

Creating a theatrical group for seniors – Primrose Productions – Willens co-produced musicals in Long Island, New York, in the 1990s and 2000s.