Nancy Bogatin

On the front lines of the civil rights struggle for seven decades.

by

"Local Treasures" is an occasional series that celebrates our city's senior celebrities, people whose impact over the decades has helped make Memphis a better place.

It was April 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered a few days earlier. Sanitation workers were marching through the streets of downtown Memphis, and Nancy Erdman Bogatin, a petite, dark-haired East Memphis mother of two, was marching with them.

Also downtown that day was Nancy’s husband, Irv Bogatin. A young attorney, he was a candidate to lead the local bar association. If elected, he would be the group’s first Jewish president. While returning from lunch with the present and past presidents of the association, one of his companions noticed the attractive marcher and asked Irv if that was his wife. His swift reply was “yes.” He excused himself and joined her.

“That took guts,” Nancy says. “I was so afraid I had ruined his dream of leading the bar association.” Irv won the election and continued as a prominent member of the legal community in Memphis for many years.

As for Nancy, her march for social justice had begun many years earlier. While a newly arrived teen in Memphis, she argued with bus drivers and theater managers when the family’s African-American maid, Minnie, was not allowed to sit with her. In college, she joined other students at the University of Missouri who were protesting the existence of a “separate but equal” branch of the school.

Nancy’s dream was equal opportunity in the broadest sense. From the right to sit in any seat on a bus, to business and social equality, to having access to the arts, to supporting early childhood education, she believed that it was the responsibility of the “haves” to share with the “have nots.” 

“Nancy believes that the finer things in life, whether it’s literacy or appreciation of the arts and literature, should not be reserved for the richer persons,” says A C Wharton, former Memphis and Shelby County mayor, who, with his wife, Ruby, has been a close friend of the family since Irv Bogatin recruited him to Memphis in 1973 to lead Memphis Area Legal Services, an organization Irv helped found that provides free legal assistance to low-income and elderly people.

Wharton adds that action is the defining component of Nancy’s beliefs. “She’s kind of like the mother dispensing castor oil,” he says. “You might spit it out or walk away but she’s going to get that castor oil in your mouth, because it’s good for you.”

Nancy’s tidy apartment in The Village at Germantown, near the eastern edge of Memphis, showcases mementos of her accomplishments. Living-room walls serve as a small art gallery, with works ranging from a collage by former Studio of Advertising and Art partner and friend Memphis artist Ham Embree to a print of the iconic “I Am a Man” photograph by Ernest C. Withers. Works by German and Mexican artists hang comfortably beside Southern watercolors. An original Carroll Cloar painting near the front door welcomes guests. 

“Memphis Brooks Art Gallery really wants that one,” said Nancy, pointing to the Cloar painting, “but my kids get first chance at it.”

The den is filled with books and family photographs. Nestled among classics by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Thomas Wolfe are Daniel Silva spy novels. The book collection as well as the apartment is eclectic, interesting, and varied. Just like Nancy.

As befits someone who worked in the fashion industry, Nancy still dresses the part with a wardrobe that features scarves and bright colors and chunky jewelry. She is stylish, quick-witted, and straight talking. Born in New York of a Southern mother, she is no steel magnolia. She is simply steel.

For almost seven decades, Nancy has been a force for change and progress in Memphis, first breaking barriers as a businesswoman, then leading nonprofit organizations. Many of her accomplishments include the descriptor “first woman.”

She was a partner in the first local female-owned advertising agency, The Studio of Advertising and Art. Committed to making Memphis a better place for all its citizens, she was the first woman chair of Goals for Memphis and served on the board of the Memphis Center for Urban Partnerships. She promoted literacy as president of the Memphis Literacy Council and leadership in Books from Birth, and as a supporter of the arts, she was the first female chair of Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and a founding board member of Hattiloo Theatre.

It’s an impressive list of contributions for someone who never meant to be a Memphian.

Born in New York Cityin 1925 to a Southern mother she says could have been a character from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, Nancy’s early life was one of privilege. Her mother had met Mark Erdman, a prosperous clothing manufacturer when she moved from Memphis to New York to pursue a career in theater.

Nancy fondly recalls her early days in New York, where she and her sister, Jane, enjoyed luxury apartments on the East Side of Manhattan, trips to Central Park, and summer vacations on New York and New Jersey beaches. However, Erdman’s business collapsed after an accountant absconded with the firm’s funds, and the golden days came to an end. Several years later her parent’s marriage ended as well.

Nancy, Jane, and her mother then moved to Coral Gables, Florida, where they lived for six months until the divorce was final. “The divorce was reported by New York gossip columnist Walter Winchell.,” she says. “I remember this very clearly because my teacher ‘kindly’ read the article to our entire class and asked if the Erdmans who were divorcing were my parents.”

Next stop was Memphis. “I remember my mother telling Jane to stop the car when we neared Memphis,” Nancy says, with a smile. “She then instructed us in no uncertain terms never to talk about anyone once we arrived because they were all related. How right she was!”

In her new hometown, Nancy not only found it difficult to form bonds with the children of her mother’s childhood friends, she was shocked by the Jim Crow attitudes of the South. She had experienced racial prejudice in New York and Florida for being Jewish. But this was different.

“During my early years in Memphis, I had self-righteous altercations with bus drivers and movie ticket-sellers when I was with Minnie, who had to sit in the back of the bus and upstairs at the theater. She was embarrassed and frightened to the point that I learned to quit making scenes,” she says.

After graduation from Central High School, Nancy’s plans were clear. “My goal, probably from the first day I woke up in Memphis at age 13, was to get back to New York,” she says. But first there was college.

World War II was in full swing in 1943 when Nancy arrived at the University of Missouri. Despite her determination to carry a heavy course load so she could graduate early, she became immersed in extracurricular activities. She was active in theater and helped form the University’s Campus Columns radio station that would lead to her first job.

She also became involved with a group of students who were working towards the racial integration of the university.

“That almost got me expelled and resulted in the first great compromise I made with life,” she says. “We had traveled to Jefferson City to meet with Lincoln University students to organize petitions and marches. Lincoln was the separate but so-called equal arm of the university in Columbia. We were later called into the president’s office where we were told we could desist or be expelled. I chose graduation, but I never forgot what I learned during that effort or how I compromised.” 

Nancy graduated in 1946 and returned to Memphis. The University of Missouri admitted its first African-American students in the fall of 1950.

Back in Memphis, Nancy’s sister was making a name for herself as a successful advertising executive. Jane’s contacts would help Nancy win her first job in Memphis.

“Jane was creative vice president of Lake-Spiro-Shurman, the ad agency for Abe Plough’s products, which included St. Joseph Aspirin and Coppertone,” Nancy says. WMPS was Plough’s radio station and she used her radio experience at Missouri to gain a job.

“One thing led to another and soon I had my own program and a new professional name — Nancy Page,” she recalls. “The last four letters came from the last name of our maid — Minnie Coppage.”

In the late 1940s, the number of televisions in the United States was measured by the thousands, with live radio providing virtually all of the news and entertainment. Nancy’s responsibilities included covering live events, and one of those events led to a memorable day for her.

“I’ll never forget the Cotton Carnival Parade in 1947,” she says. “The station was broadcasting it live on national radio. We had a block of time to fill but it rained and the parade was delayed.

“The parade might not have had to start on time, but our broadcast did. We had the description of the floats, who was riding on them, and what they were wearing, so we just faked the whole thing. My date picked me up after the parade, and he couldn’t figure out why the traffic was being held for the parade after the ‘broadcast’ of the event had ended. I never told a soul [about this] until a few years ago. I was afraid I’d go to jail!”

With a year and a half in radio under her belt, Nancy was ready to return to New York. “The job search was an eye-opener,” she says. “I couldn’t even get my foot in the door of a radio station. There was one unforgettable creep who kept asking if Erdman was an Italian name. New York had just instituted an equal opportunity law, and he was trying like the devil to find out if I was Jewish.”

But since Nancy knew she had to find a job, she was not to be deterred. One of her clients at WMPS had been Sears, and the president of the Memphis stores had given her a letter of introduction to the head of retail advertising for the entire Sears chain. So she set her sights on a career in the fashion industry.

Nancy was hired by Sears, despite being told during an interview that she was not the “Sears type.”

“It just happened to be a job for which I was as well-equipped as my future dogs would have been,” she laughs while retelling the tale. However, she quickly worked her way up, first as a national fashion coordinator and later as a buyer.

Although she was traveling the country for Sears and enjoying a New York City lifestyle filled with theater, ballet, politics, and friends, Nancy returned often to Memphis to visit her mother. It was during one of those trips back to Memphis that she met Irvin Bogatin, a handsome young attorney.

“Minnie told me that he was the man I was going to marry and bet me $20 that I would. I was vehement that it wouldn’t happen. I wasn’t going to live in Memphis.” Two years later Nancy returned to Memphis for good. She and Irv were married January 24, 1952.

“Moving back to the South was an emotional challenge,” Nancy admits. “I didn’t want to be a Memphian. I was/am a New Yorker through and through. I didn’t fit into the mold of the good Southern wife at that time. Irv assumed that I would not be going back to work. I responded by asking for a schedule of the return flights to New York.”

But, with love and compromise, the Bogatins began what would be a successful marriage of more than 50 years. They became one of the early “power couples” in Memphis, and theirs was a partnership of mutual love, admiration, and support for each other and the community. Irv died in 2008, and Nancy still speaks lovingly of “that guy.”

“We had a fine marriage,” she says, “one of trust, mutual respect, and shared philosophy. We both knew when to give way to the other, how to bolster hopes and share ambitions. It must have been hard to be [my] husband in a wealthy Memphis crowd that neither understood nor approved of working women. But he backed me in my independence, and counseled and encouraged my professional and community aspirations.

“I wasn’t a typical Memphian, but I wasn’t alone,” Nancy said. “I remember when Ben Hooks was running for the Memphis school board. It might have been the first time an African American was on the ballot for any local office. Irv and I were having a beer with our neighbors the night of the election. 

“A neighbor who was a poll officer, commented, somewhat disgustedly, ‘There were actually two votes for that ‘n-word’ in this precinct.’ Irv and I looked at one another and said nothing. We knew exactly who those two votes came from.”

As she settled into life asa Memphian, Nancy began work at Lowenstein’s Department Store as a fashion coordinator. There she met future business partner and lifelong friend Ham Embree. Later, Nancy called on her experiences in merchandising and marketing and promotion and opened a dress shop called Casuals Memphis.

The store closed before the arrival of Nancy’s second child, Liz, who joined older brother, Bo. Both now live in the San Francisco area, where Bo is an attorney specializing in the arts and Liz works with nonprofits.

While still in the hospital just after Liz’s birth, Nancy received a call from a friend who owned a dress shop and wanted her help with advertising. Nancy contacted Ham and the result was The Studio of Art and Advertising, a woman-owned small business, one of the first in Memphis, in 1956.

The agency operated successfully for more than two decades, but Nancy was ready to move on. She sold the company to Embree and opened NEB, Inc., offering consulting and general advertising services. It was after she closed NEB, Inc. in the early 1980s that Nancy began to devote her time to nonprofit groups.

“I became chairman of the board for the Literacy Council, founded by Jocelyn Rudner [a close friend and daughter of Abe Plough]. The council focused on illiterate adults, of which Memphis had more than its share.”

From there, Nancy joined the Arts Council Board of Directors, later becoming the first female chairman of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art Board of Trustees. She devoted much of her time and energy to the Rameses exhibit [the first of the “Wonders” series] and created, at no charge, a catalog used by many cities across the country.

Next came Goals for Memphis, a community-wide program seeking answers to Memphis’ failing education system. “My personal dream had been to establish a public/private foundation in support of public education,” Nancy says. “Gid Smith, Community Foundation of Greater Memphis director, and Jocelyn Rudner, head of the Plough Foundation, took the lead, and Partners in Public Education (PIPE) was born. I became its first female board chair.”

To help prepare young Memphians for the future, Nancy helped found Books from Birth, an offshoot of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Books from Birth, now a program administered by Porter-Leath, mails an age-appropriate book every month to 47,000 children in Shelby County.

While her leadership positions are numerous, many people associated with the organizations Nancy has supported are quick to point out that she’s a hands-on leader willing to take on any role that will further the cause.

“Nancy was my salesperson and my door-to-door companion,” recalls Wharton of their days spent trying to garner support for Books from Birth. “While she’s generous with monetary contributions, she gives something more precious than a check; she gives her time.”

“Nancy is one of a kind,” says Diane Rudner, chairman of the board of the Plough Foundation and daughter of Jocelyn Rudner, a long-time friend and associate of Nancy’s. “She continues, after decades and decades, to be a perfect role model for women of all ages, tackling new community problems, identifying new approaches to old problems, widening her network of associates, and being a respected advisor to organizations she has been involved with over the years.”

“Nancy is the ‘poster child’ of civic leadership,” says Ekundayo Bandele, founder and executive director of Hattiloo, the only freestanding black repertory theater in the area. “She is a thoughtful, wonderful, and experienced civic leader.”

Involved with Hattiloo from its inception, Nancy’s 90th birthday was celebrated at the theater. This coming October, her family will be recognizing her 93rd birthday by sponsoring a performance by the Iris Orchestra featuring famed Japanese-American violinist Midori.

“I told my kids, ‘You know when I check out of here, you’re going to want to do something special for me, so why don’t we do it now while I’m here?’” Nancy explains. “I still remember Midori’s concert with Leonard Bernstein in 1986, when she was just 15, and I told them that was the concert I’d like them to sponsor with me.”

But Nancy seems far from ready to “check out.” During a recent lunch, she strongly urged a friend to join her in volunteering to support Phil Bredesan’s run for the Senate. It was clear she wasn’t going to give up until she got a “yes.” And she mentioned that Kathy Buckman Gibson, chairman of the Shelby County Early Childhood Education Plan (SCECEP) partnership, recently contacted her about a project she thought Nancy would find interesting.

“My kids talked about me moving to California but other than them, I don’t know anyone there,” she says. “And since I can’t afford the apartment I would want in New York City, I plan on staying here.”

So Nancy Erdman Bogatin remains in the city where she never planned to live and continues to search for ways to make the community a better one. “I used to think I knew everything I needed to know,” she says, “but now I’m not a bit sure. I do know that it has been, and continues to be, a great adventure.”