Brad L. Graham, November 1968 – January 2010

It is with deep sadness that The Rep says goodbye to Brad Graham – dedicated publicist, inspiring colleague, gifted communicator and dearest friend.

How do you begin to describe Brad? If he was here, we’d give him the writing assignment, as no one else could match his style or wit. So instead, we will begin with Brad’s words from his own popular blog:

I was born on a Monday morning, November 25, 1968, in a hospital that doesn't exist any longer in Hannibal, Missouri. A few days later, I decided to move in with my parents, who lived in the nearby town of New London.

Today, I live in the historic Shaw neighborhood of St. Louis where I share a three-story 1910 house with my friend Ken, four TiVos, at least five Macintosh computers, and an embarrassingly large collection of DVDs and CDs (largely show tunes and torch singers).

I enjoy traveling and have visited 48 of the United States, been all across Canada and hit a few bits of Europe. Still, I've yet to discover any place other than St. Louis that I'd rather live. I am also fond of reading (mostly non-fiction and that much-maligned form, the literary memoir), dining out with good friends, and all sorts of theatre.

Brad was in his tenth season as Public Relations Manager for The Rep, a job that encompasses media relations, a variety of writing assignments, website management, social media marketing and much more. Prior to joining The Rep staff, Brad’s professional work experience included three years as Marketing Director at COCA, various writing and editing jobs at KETC, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Webster-Kirkwood Times, and a considerable body of work as a free-lance writer and editor.

Brad graduated with a B.A. in Journalism from Webster University in 1991, and taught entertainment journalism at Webster from 2001 through 2006.

Brad was widely known as a pioneer in social networking who was considered to be influential in the birth of blogging, starting his personal blog, The BradLands, in 1998. Brad is also known to many as a long-time participant in the SXSW Interactive Festival, serving since 2005 as the host of the SXSW Baby! blog. Through his blogging and his involvement in SXSW, Brad built a large circle of friends and colleagues throughout the country. Brad will be remembered by many as having first coined the phrase “blogosphere,” which was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2004.

Judy Newmark, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Theatre Critic, best summed up Brad’s professionalism, enthusiasm for the theatre and generosity of spirit:

Brad started out as an old-media writer (I believe a typewriter was involved) but he embraced new forms, blogging and tweeting and more. A social networking pioneer who’s credited with coining the word “blogosphere,” he loved this stuff, and many of the people mourning him now never met him face to face. But they were crazy about his imagination, his style and his generosity.

So were colleagues, actors and other theater artists. In a world that’s unusually open to “temperament,” Brad was a cool drink of water, refreshing and reliable and always willing to share a burden or take on another job. It almost goes without saying that he made my job easier day after day and year after year….

People in the theater know that they don’t have regular jobs, but sometimes they’re dissatisfied, just like people in any other field. They can forget that what they do for a living is more fun than anyone is entitled to get paid to have. Brad never forgot, though, and he did his utmost to make sure everyone around him was able to remember that as well.

Brad is survived and missed by his mother, Mary Jo Graham, of New London, Missouri, by his dear friends and colleagues at The Rep, by everyone in the St. Louis theatre community, and by his friends throughout the blogosphere.