Reynolds PR executive, poet Joseph Awad dies

By day, for more than three decades, Joseph Frederick Awad was a man in a suit who brought Reynolds Metals Co.'s massive public-relations program to full blossom.

By night, he wrote hundreds of poems, often in longhand on legal pads and notebooks under the light above the kitchen table in his western Henrico County home.

Mr. Awad, inducted into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame in 1992 and named Virginia's poet laureate in 1998, died Friday in a Henrico hospital after a brief illness.

A prayer service for the 80-year-old Henrico resident will be held Monday at 6:15 p.m. at Bliley Funeral Homes' Central Chapel, 3801 Augusta Ave.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Tuesday at 11 a.m. at St. Mary's Catholic Church, 9505 Gayton Road. Interment will be private.

After graduating in English literature at Georgetown University and editing the literary Georgetown journal, Mr. Awad had to ask "What's public relations?" when a friend told him of a job opening at a small Washington public-relations firm.

He worked for the firm writing news releases for Maryland racetracks and mingling in press corps circles while doing graduate work at Georgetown. He also studied at the Corcoran School of Art.

He went to Reynolds in 1957. Eight years later, he was director of public relations and, eventually, executive vice president for public relations.

By the time he retired in 1993, Mr. Awad had served as the national president of the Public Relations Society of America. He had chaired the PRSA's College of Fellows, an elite corps that demands 20 years of experience and role-model behavior for other public-relations practitioners. The Old Dominion Chapter of the PRSA had presented him its Thomas Jefferson Award for service to his profession.

After he retired, the writing projects he had envisioned did not materialize, so he took time off to refresh himself by painting in oils.

A year later, he was ready to write. In addition to numerous poems published nationally, he produced four books of poetry: "Neon Distances," "Shenandoah Long Ago," "Leaning to Hear the Music" and his most recent, "Big Bang," a poem in 12 cantos.

His "Shenandoah" book revisited themes from his childhood in the small coal-mining town of the same name in eastern Pennsylvania.

Mr. Awad came into the world in 1929, the year of the stock market crash. He always said that his combined passionate Irish heritage on his mother's side and Lebanese heritage on his father's made the perfect prescription for a poet.

He lost his mother when he was 8 years old and lived with his grandparents until he was in the fifth grade, while his barber-father, who lacked work in Shenandoah, established himself in Washington.

A nun who taught Mr. Awad in parochial school helped him earn a scholarship to a prestigious Jesuit school in Washington. She also had her pupils read out loud to overcome shyness. Her influence, he said in a 1997 Times-Dispatch interview, was a turning point for him.

Mr. Awad was a former president of the Poetry Society of Virginia, which awarded him its Edgar Allan Poe Prize. He also had served as vice president of the Virginia Writers Club.

Survivors include his wife of 58 years, Doris Brown Awad; three sons, Michael Awad and Timothy Awad, both of Richmond, and Christopher Awad of St. Louis; seven daughters, Jean Ritchie, Patricia Spatig and Mary Theresa Awad, all of Richmond, Judith Kettleman of Middletown, Md., Marguerite "Maggie" Cauthorn of Tappahannock, Clare Marrin of Staunton and Ann E. Ampolini of Winston-Salem, N.C.; a sister, Mary Fratter of Dunkirk, Md.; and 29 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.