 Mary's parents ran a hotel
when she was a child, and she would later become a successful
business owner herself.
She married Ben Rogers when she was just 17 years old. They had
three children together, each of whom would later work with her in
her business.
While still a teenager, with her husband serving in World War II,
she took a job selling books door-to-door, selling $25,000 worth in
only six months. When Ben returned home from the war, he divorced
Mary. She then went to work for Stanley Home Products, becoming one
of their top sales directors. Unfortunately, though, she saw many of
the men who worked for her get promoted above her,
often earning twice what she was making.
Realizing that it was due to the fact that she was a woman, she
retired after 25 years. This is when she wrote her first book. She
wrote three books in all, and all three became best-sellers. But
it's not her success as an author that earned her the love and
respect of everyone she knew. Her first book was actually a
blueprint showing women how to succeed in business rather than
enduring the same fate that she suffered in being passed over for
promotions. The book became the foundation for the business that she
would start with her 20-year-old son, Richard.
So Mary and Richard opened a storefront business in Dallas on
Friday the 13th in September of 1963, the same year and city in
which JFK was assassinated. But that has nothing to do with this
story.
The business did surprisingly well. In fact, it did even better
after Mary appeared on "60 Minutes." It wasn't her business that
made her famous, though. Oh, wait -- yes, it was.
Her life story was made into a movie, in which Shirley MacLaine
played her role. But it wasn't the movie that made her a household
name that you know. It was her revolutionary business and the
opportunities that she created for women.
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 In business and in life, she was guided by her motto: "God first,
family second, career third."
This approach served her well in her personal life as well as in
her career, because Mary lost her second husband, George Hallenbeck,
to a heart attack just one month before she was to launch her
business.
She built her company into such a success that Fortune magazine
named her business as one of the 100 best companies to work for in
America. Along the way, she had to endure lawsuits by some of her
former employees. The woman who helped so many women find their
inner strength had enough strength herself to overcome each of the
major struggles that she faced in her personal life.
Three years after George died, Mary married her third and final
husband, Mel Ash, in 1966. They were married for 14 years before he
died. Mary lived another 21 years after Mel died.
There's a museum that was built in her honor in 1993, just three
years before she established a nonprofit foundation to conduct
research into the various types of cancer that afflict women. That
was the same year in which she suffered a stroke.
She was an inspiration to her sales reps -- all 800,000 of them
by the time she was finished. The company that she founded with her
son has sales reps spread out over 37 countries, ringing up annual
sales of more than $2 billion.
You see, Mary Kathryn Wagner was no average woman. Along with her
son, she founded and ran the company that bears her name -- Mary Kay
Cosmetics.
[By
PAUL NIEMANN]
Paul Niemann may be reached at
niemann7@aol.com.
Copyright Paul Niemann 2007
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