Newsletter pioneer Denny Griswold dies at 92, under very disturbing circumstances.

Denny Griswold and her husband, Glenn Griswold, former publisher of Business Week, founded PR News in 1944, the first periodical to report on public relations. After the death of her husband in 1950, she married J. Langdon Sullivan in 1951 but kept the name by which she would become legendary in the public relations world. PR News was a seminal publication in the field and through it Denny Griswold became, as fellow PR newsletter publisher Jack O'Dwyer put it, "a tireless promoter of PR, PR executives and her newsletter. She not only gave out thousands of awards to PR executives but accumulated more than 130 herself."

She also left her mark in the newsletter industry. "She was one of my first boosters when I was forming the newsletter association," said NL/NL publisher emeritus Howard Penn Hudson, referring to his efforts in the early 1970s to organize New York newsletter publishers into a group which would, in 1974, join the Washington Independent Newsletter Association to form what is now the Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Association. "She was one of the early people who said to me, 'I'm with you,"' Hudson recalled.

"She put her PR knowledge to bear when we started the New York chapter of the association," Hudson continued. "She told us in one of those early meetings that we now had to sell the association to other publishers. To convey a serious, business-like message Denny said we should have the meetings at the Waldorf Astoria. And we did."

Hudson said, "I have nothing but the highest praise for her newsletter. She was one of the early ones to make her newsletter attractive. Many then were pretty ragged looking but she correctly thought PR News could be well designed and still function as a serious newsletter."

Griswold was known for her love of important people and big banquets, "hobnobbing with the biggies" in O'Dwyer's words. Hudson put a journalistic spin on her love of celebrity: "She quoted people a lot and ran a lot of names in her newsletter, which we all know sells subscriptions."

But her last six years were anything but spent in the limelight. She was totally isolated in a nursing home in Wilton, Conn.. She died February 7, but the first public word of it didn't appear until the March 14 issue of Jack O'Dwyer's Newsletter. And The New York Times didn't publish her obituary until March 24, and then probably at the urging of O'Dwyer, whom the obit quotes.

Griswold had been in the care of her niece Susan Garrett since 1995 when she broke her hip. Since that time, friends, professional colleagues (including Harold Burson, Wes Pedersen and other leading PR practitioners), and even her stepchildren had been unable to contact her. Their mail was not answered and she couldn't be reached by phone.

Susan Garrett's husband, Russell, told people to send mail to her Weston. Conn., home, where the Garretts took up residence. By all reports, none of that mail ever reached Griswold.

In 1995 the Public Relations Society of America created a silver tray in her honor but were blocked from delivering it to her at the Wilton Meadows Healthcare Center.

In 1996 an ombudsman visited her and found her without her hearing aid and in restraints. Griswold had given Susan Garrett power of attorney but that did not mean she gave up any rights. According to a published report, the ombudsman asked her if she would like to see her stepchildren and she replied that she would. But that never happened.

Jack O'Dwyer, who was in direct competition with Griswold and who often didn't share her views of the public relations function, has since her death taken up her cause. He has devoted many pages of the last two issues of his newsletter to her life and death, nursing home law, and the silent Garretts.

"Federal rules say," O'Dwyer reported, "that only if a resident is judged incompetent can their rights be exercised by another person appointed under state law."

"Examiners found Denny had lost none of her marbles," O'Dwyer reported elsewhere. "Friends of Denny are mystified as to how the law could allow the 'queen of communications' to be held incommunicado for about five years. We're all in trouble if such a thing is possible."

Lisa Kovitz, president of Women Executives in Public Relations--which Griswold founded in 1945--has written to the Wilton Meadows administrator, copying the Connecticut State Ombudsman: "We are not only greatly saddened by news of Denny's passing but also greatly alarmed by reports of the circumstances in which she reportedly lived while in the Wilton facility during her final years."

Griswold had considered donating her Manhattan townhouse to PRSA as its permanent headquarters, and she was thinking of donating her extensive collection of furniture, antiques and art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But those talks abruptly ended in 1995.

O'Dwyer reported that the Sullivan family favored the donation of the townhouse to PRSA and the donation of many of the antiques to the Met. "Ancestor John Sullivan was a general in the Revolutionary War and James Sullivan was governor of Massachusetts.

"The townhouse was sold for about $3 million several years ago. The Sullivan family does not know what happened to the furniture, art and other contents."

PR News was sold in 1992 to Phillips Publishing International which sold it last year to Veronis, Suhler & Associates. NEPA honored Griswold as Publisher of the Year in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the founding of her newsletter.

The presentation of the award at the association's annual conference at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., was probably one of the last of the public appearances she thrived on so much.