SCHAUMBURG, Ill.—Edgar R. Koons, former public relations director for the GARBC and Regular Baptist Press, visited our offices in Schaumburg this week. Now retired and living in California, Koons was visiting the Chicago area with his son, Bob.
“But I don’t know the first thing about being a public relations director,” Koons had said when Dr. Robert Ketcham first approached him about joining the RBP staff in 1960.
“Fine,” Ketcham replied. “I’ll send you to the library for two months.”
So Koons moved to the Chicago area with his young family, spent his two months in the library, and then began work at the GARBC offices, then located at the Transportation Building at 600 South Dearborn, downtown Chicago.
One of his first tasks was updating the GARBC promotional materials.
“Dr. Ketcham asked me to design the association logo. So I drew one up, took it to Dr. Ketcham, and he approved it without any changes.”
Soon after he was hired, Koons had discovered that the GARBC general fund was perpetually in the red. His solution was to inaugurate a “penny fund,” a campaign to raise just five pennies from each member in a GARBC church. A gifted writer, Koons drafted an attractive letter of appeal and wrote an introductory article in the Baptist Bulletin.
As it turned out, many churches took Koons literally. They mailed him the pennies! Starting with 2,916 cents from Tabernacle Baptist Church of Seattle, Wash., pennies poured in from around the country. After the deficit was recovered, Koons’s idea remained sound. Many GARBC churches continue to support the general fund with monthly gifts.
