Nat Read Retires from Public Relations

Nat Read is closing his public relations business after 27 years, to make room for full-time writing. Over the years he has helped clients with projects such as the vitalization of Old Pasadena through the development of its “anchor,” the One Colorado Boulevard block; completion of the light rail Gold Line from Los Angeles to Pasadena after the MTA had killed the project; conversion of Paseo Colorado and restoration of its view corridor; and completion of the 710 Freeway, which was approved by the MTA in 2010 and is now two and a half years into its environmental study phase. Read is succeeded as chair of the 710 Freeway Coalition by former City of San Gabriel Mayor Harry Baldwin.

“I want to make time for my passion of writing while I still have my health, my energy and my marbles,” Read said. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine and dozens of other newspapers and magazines. He has authored five books, including Don Benito Wilson: From Mountain Man to Mayor, the story of Los Angeles as it transitioned from a Mexican pueblo to an American city with the important involvement of B.D. Wilson, the namesake of Mount Wilson.

Read opened Read Communications in 1985 as a full-service public relations agency in an upstairs room of a historic Greene and Greene house in Pasadena. With the growth of the business, he soon moved to another site, the Chamber of Commerce Building in Old Pasadena. In 1995 he restructured Read Communications as a consultancy focusing on government relations and crisis management.

Read began his professional career as an advertising copywriter for Standard Rate & Data Service in Skokie, Illinois. He served worked 15 years in public relations management for Sears, Roebuck and Co. in Chicago and Los Angeles. He then joined American High Speed Rail Corporation as an officer and vice president. This firm’s “Bullet Train” project was to connect Los Angeles and San Diego with a high speed rail project using private funding. It got closer to completion than any other high speed rail project in the US before or since. Read formed Read Communications after the railroad ran out of funds and closed its doors in 1984.

Nat Read served as board chair of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce and as president of the Twilight Club of Pasadena, the Public Relations Society of America – Los Angeles Chapter, Los Angeles Donors Roundtable and as chair of the Pasadena Breakfast Forum. He served on the boards of the San Gabriel Valley Economic Partnership, Pasadena Museum of History, Los Angeles Urban League, Pasadena Rotary Club, Upper Hastings Ranch Association, Pasadena Navy League, Publicity Club of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Police Reserve Foundation, Glendale Chamber of Commerce, Glendale Symphony Association, Jonathan Club and a number of other non-profit organizations. He was a founding board member of California General Bank (later Professional Business Bank and now Bank of Manhattan).

He served in the Navy and Naval Reserve for 23 years, retiring as a captain. He was a reserve line officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, working undercover vice in Hollywood and gang suppression in South Los Angeles. As a stand-up comic he performed throughout the Western US and Canada. He became one of fewer than a hundred people to stand at both the north and south poles. His many interests are chronicled in his autobiography, One Journey; Many Trails.

He moved to Pasadena in 1970 and raised a son, Kevin, and daughter, Debbie, in Pasadena. They attended Don Benito Elementary School, Walden School, Westridge School and Flintridge Prep and are now a law school professor and pediatrician respectively.