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An upsetting self-revelation: I've outlived a surprising number of direct marketers who have been my contemporaries.

I shouldn't have been surprised, sitting at a lunch table during the recent DMA conference, that some of the younger attendees looked nonplused when a few of us geezers were talking about DM stalwarts who no longer stride the earth.

It bothered me later on. Here were experts, builders of direct marketing legends…and already we're moving into a generation who never heard of them.

So, since “the season to be jolly” is approaching, I'm going to celebrate a few of these pioneers, hoping that having their names in print for what may be the last time will jog a few memories…and maybe, since this publication sometimes becomes part of an office's permanent library, give them the touch of immortality they deserve.

Leading the pack has to be the great Walter Schmidt. His international symposium in Montreux, Switzerland, established global connections for direct marketing. Walter also set the pace for presentation quality. He insisted that speakers send copies of their speeches, and if he felt the presentations were weak, uneducating or self-serving, he gave an option: Improve them or don't show up.

Walter and his brilliant associate, Ursula Spleiss, sold the symposium to a commercial events company. Within three years the event was dead.

I miss Dick Hodgson, my classmate at Northwestern University. Dick was the consummate master of combining creativity with marketing savvy, two factors many current practitioners have separated. I remember fondly that whenever we'd reunite, at Montreux or a DMA function, Dick invariably would say, “I never understood your graduate-level experiments with subliminal perception,” and I'd reply, “Neither did I.” It became a ritual, with mandatory laughter.

Then there was Jo-Von Tucker, who established validity for an astonishing number of catalogs. She once shared a hot-air balloon ride with my wife and me in Canberra, Australia. The ride ended by dumping all of us into a pasture loaded with cow-pies, and that was a lifetime bonding agent. What a trouper she was! In her last years, she had to wheel around an oxygen tank with her, but she always presented a happy face.

Speaking of happy, how about “Rocket Ray” Jutkins? I never quite knew what Ray did, but his upbeat personality was infectious. Once he filled the auditorium in Cape Town, South Africa, with smoke as he rode into the hall on a motorcycle. And when Ray learned he had a terminal illness, he organized a farewell party.

Pete Hoke, who published Direct Marketing in its salad days, may have been too much a statesman. His father, founder of the magazine, had reached an agreement with the DMA (remember when it was the DMMA, Direct Mail Marketing Association?) to have the publication included with membership. When competition came onto the scene, Pete let that agreement lapse. You or I wouldn't have been so self-defeatingly gracious.

One of my favorites was J. Roderick MacArthur. Rod MacArthur was the diminutive and often disaffected son of John MacArthur, who made Bankers Life Insurance the king of mail order insurance. Rod bought a corporate shell called Bradford Galleries and remodeled it into The Bradford Exchange. He single-handedly organized and dominated the collector's plate explosion of the 1970s and '80s. Hundreds of thousands bought those instant antiques based on ratings set by the Bradford Exchange. Rod set a new standard for bright, clever, wily and irresistible direct response salesmanship.

Alvin Eicoff's corporeal entity has left us…but his corporate entity, A. Eicoff & Co., thrives under the dynamic Ron Bliwas as a major component of one of those giant advertising agency conglomerates. My best memory of Al Eicoff goes back a lot of years, when he'd wander down from his Michigan Avenue offices to the little film studio on Wabash Avenue I owned together with Martin Schmidhofer, and we'd shoot a bunch of direct response commercials for d-Con or whatever. (Marty Schmidhofer, who had hands of gold on the camera, left me a major legacy: He taught me how to play the musical saw. In fact, I once played Victor Herbert's “Moonbeams” before a bunch of gaping folks.)

One more: The late Frederick Haviland, who was the last linear Haviland of the famed porcelain house. Frederick was a courtly gentleman. To everyone's astonishment at Calhoun's Collectors Society, my wife Margo (we weren't married then) talked him into an elite series of limited-edition Haviland porcelain plates, and even though he chuckled quietly that he had no idea what we were doing, Frederick graciously lent his own name to the promotion…which was an instant smash hit.

Let's not forget Ed Burnett, whose Ed Burnett Consultants was the merry and irreverent image of the list industry for more than 40 years. Ed died about two years ago at age 90, leaving as a legacy two generations of list experts who learned the ups, downs and peculiarities of the business from that wry, good-natured guy.

The uncommon common denominator of all these much-missed folks was the combination of a sense of humor, total business reality, and a willingness to share their wisdom. In the hard-bitten 21st century, such a combination isn't easily found.

The Good Book has a line, “There were giants in the earth in those days.” Oh, yes, there were. And those of us who were lucky enough to rub shoulders with these giants aren't about to forget them. I'd like to think that even if you weren't as lucky as we were, you won't forget them too.

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Herschell Gordon Lewis (www.herschellgordonlewis.com) is the principal of Lewis Enterprises in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Heconsults with and writes direct response copy for clients worldwide. “Hot Appeals or Burnt Offerings” is his recently published 30th book. Among his other books are “Open Me Now,” the curmudgeonly titled “Asinine Advertising,” and “On the Art of Writing Copy” (third edition).