STORYTELLER JERRY CHIPMAN
Sharing compelling messages has been life’s mission for Jerry Chipman
Sharing compelling messages has been his life’s mission, first in PR at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, now full time at Theatre Memphis.
In communications you’re not promoting yourself, you’re behind the scenes telling someone else’s story and that transfers over to directing a play.”
Jerry Chipman, retired PR executive
Jerry Chipman spent the past 40 years telling other people’s stories on two very different stages. Not surprisingly, after all that time, he has a few stories of his own to share.
Chipman retired June 29 as vice president for corporate and executive relations at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, but plans to continue acting and directing at Theatre Memphis.
“In communications, you’re not promoting yourself; you’re behind the scenes telling someone else’s story, and that transfers over to directing a play,” said Chipman. “You’re combining all of the elements into telling a playwright’s story. It’s being true to a work and communicating it to an audience.”
Chipman’s dual careers in directing and public relations began about the same time.
He moved to Memphis with his family from East Theatre Memphis executive producer Debbie Litch (left) says Jerry Chipman is regarded as “an actor’s director.” Tennessee during high school and earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts with a double major in English and theater history with a minor in journalism from then-Memphis State University.
He had his first acting and directing gigs there, working on small productions, and just two weeks after graduating he landed a job at Schering-Plough in public relations. Not long after that, St. Jude recruit- ed him to be a director of communications.
“(St. Jude) was my career; it was my life,” said Chipman. “It’s a wonderful place to work in every respect — the mission, the people you work with, the camaraderie among people. We didn’t need Forbes magazine to tell us it was a great place to work.”
Over the years, Chipman met with innumerable families of children in treatment for cancer and worked with them to tell their stories of survival, coordinating daily with ALSAC, St. Jude’s funding organization, which uses stories for marketing.
“It’s always their choice to tell their story or not,” said Chipman. “You have so many wonderful families who are so grateful that they want to tell their story. They believe it will benefit the hospital in terms of increased donations. You never have to make that point with them.”
One child he remembers was a girl of 9 from South America who was flown to a hospital in New York that turned her away because her family had no insurance.
“Marlo Thomas saw the story in The New York Post and called the clinical director at St. Jude,” said Chipman. “The child was flown to Memphis and went into remission after treatment. She has graduated from Christian Brothers with honors and is now in her early 20s, and she’s working in one of our labs at St. Jude doing scientific research. That’s pretty exciting.”
Over the years, the survival rates for pediatric cancer began to climb, and public relations at St. Jude grew as well.
“When there was a St. Jude story to tell throughout the last 40 years, Jerry Chipman was there,” said Dr. William E. Evans, director and CEO of St. Jude. “Jerry started out as a department of one and steadily built our public relations and communications staff and scope. He played a major role in helping the public understand St. Jude’s global leader position, and he also was a great liaison to the Memphis community. We will miss him, for sure.”
At the same time, Chipman was helping young actors who are now household names in Memphis theater take on their first roles.
Christina Wellford Scott met Chipman about 30 years ago, as she transitioned from singing in operas to acting in plays. They’ve worked together ever since. Most recently, he directed her in “A Delicate Balance” at Theatre Memphis.
“I was fairly new to acting, and Jerry is a relent- less director and a perfectionist,” said Wellford Scott. “He would come back every night at intermission and at the end and give me notes.
“At the last show of the run, he came back during intermission and started giving me notes on the first act. I started laughing and asked, ‘Is this for the next time I do this role?’ We both laughed. He really does work through every moment with you.”
There were some darker moments to work through as well. In the 1980s, a bereaved father with psychological problems whose child did not survive his cancer came to St. Jude and held several people hostage for more than 36 hours.
Chipman became the face of St. Jude to an everpresent media.
“That was a dark day for us,” said Chipman. “I was working with the lead hostage negotiator to go out on a regular basis to the media and keep them updated, and we worked carefully with the police department as to the information that was revealed.
“It was in the midst of winter with snow and ice. Most people were outside standing under umbrellas and freezing. We tried to keep them updated.”
Judith Black Moore, director of the hospital’s communications department said, “I got the phrase ‘it is what it is’ from Jerry, and since the first time he said that to me, I have used it to put things in perspective at work and in life in general.
“This was Jerry. He could find the humor in a situation so that even on the toughest days you’d find yourself laughing as you worked through the challenge.”
Chipman watched both St. Jude and Theatre Memphis grow into familiar names.
When Washington University offered to move St. Jude to St. Louis, Chipman was the one who eventually got to tell The Commercial Appeal that St. Jude had decided to stay.
“Up to that point, perhaps Memphis had taken St. Jude for granted, but after that there was an appreciation that had not been there before,” Chipman said.
“Armed with a typewriter and carbon paper, Chipman wrote press releases and worked with media, large and small, to celebrate our successes, such as increases in survival rates, to mourning the death of our founder, Danny Thomas,” said Elizabeth Jane Walker, print production manager/edi- tor for St. Jude.
“Jerry’s institutional knowledge is vast, and his heart is just as big.”
Chipman also worked his way onto Theatre Memphis’ board and was past president when executive producer Debbie Litch took the reins eight years ago.
“No. 1, he’s going to come totally prepared,” said Litch. “He knows his script, has done his research. He’s regarded as an actor’s director because he takes such great care of them as individuals.”
This season, Chipman will direct two plays instead of one, “Dangerous Liaisons” in October and “A Steady Rain” in the spring.
He said his other plans so far include simple pleasures like working in his garden in the middle of the day and catching up on books and DVDs.
Asked why he never left St. Jude to become a full-time theater director, Chipman said, “There were times early on that it did enter my mind, but I didn’t think I was ready for it, I just became comfortable and satisfied.
“The theater community is an excellent one. It has satisfied that creative part of me. I don’t take any of this for granted.”
TOKYO — A diet low in carbohydrates could increase the risk of heart attack and stroke over the long term, according to a study by a group of researchers.
The research team, which includes academics from Harvard University, announced the study in the British Medical Journal.
The team examined the dietary habits of 43,396 Swedish women, aged 30 to 49, in 1991 and 1992. The participants were monitored for incidence of car- diovascular diseases for an average of about 16 years.
The group analyzed 1,270 cases of cardiovascular events, categorizing them into 10 stages, according to participants’ intake of carbohydrates and protein.
Results showed that the incidence rate of cardiovascular disease increased by 4 percent at each stage, as carbohydrate intake decreased and protein intake rose.
In general, people who go on a low-carb diet tend to increase their intake of protein.