HARLINGEN — Ruthie Ewers has made history.
For more than 20 years, the Harlingen community leader ran one of the country’s biggest direct mail marketing companies, mailing as many as 2.2 million pieces a day while building the firm into a $25 million business.
Now, the Smithsonian Institution’s Postal Museum has unveiled an exhibit to showcase Ewers and LEE Marketing.
“I’m very humbled. I’m very honored,” Ewers said. “It amazed me.”
On Sept. 13, Ewers, her husband Norbert Ewers and sons Joe and Ron traveled to Washington, D.C., where U.S. Postmaster General Megan Brennan unveiled the Postal Museum’s exhibit featuring a written history of LEE Marketing and four videotapes in which Ewers and her family tell the story of their business.
“I did everything because the Postal Service and I were partners in making my customers successful,” Ewers said of her work with the Postal Service.
In 1974, Ewers, her husband, and partner Liz Leonard launched LEE Marketing.
Around a kitchen table in Grand Prairie, they hatched a business plan that put their customers first.
“We provided a high level of customer service in meeting our customers’ needs through on-time mail delivery and future product expansion,” Ewers said.
As part of the business, the U.S. Postal Service played a big role.
“I was smart enough to realize no matter how good I was in direct mail, I was only as good as the post office,” Ewers said.
So she worked to improve the Postal Service.
“The Postal Service was a big bureaucracy. Who do you call? We thought we needed to build a relationship,” she said. “I thought we needed to improve communication between the Postal Service and its customers.”
In the early 1970s, Ewers co-founded the Dallas chapter of the Postal Customer Council.
Ewers’ work led then-Postmaster General Marvin Runyon to appoint her the Postal Customer Council’s first national chairperson.
“I did a lot of hard work for the Postal Service,” she said.
In her new role, Ewers traveled the country, promoting the Postal Service.
“I taught businesses how to build their business using direct mail marketing,” she said. “I taught them how to work through the bureaucracy of the Postal Service.”
During bad times, Ewers reached out to help her friends.
When a series of shootings involving postal workers seemed to mar the Postal Service’s image, she was there to help its mail carriers cope.
“I did public relations — free. I wanted people to see the other side of the Postal Service,” she said. “The post office was going through a difficult time. Self-esteem was low. The postal workers were down. I’d tell the carriers how important they were because they touch people every day.”
In 1987, then-Postmaster General Tony Frank honored Ewers with the Post Office’s Partnership in Progress Award.
“I felt I was part of the Postal Service family,” she said.
Meanwhile, her business was booming.
“We had a good reputation,” she said.
Ewers was working with many of the country’s biggest companies, including General Motors, Dell Computers, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, the Dallas Cowboys, Universal Studios, Neiman Marcus, Dillard’s and Macy’s.
Every workday between 1990 and 1996, Ewers was mailing 1.2 million pieces of first-class mail and 1 million pieces of third-class mail.
By the time she sold LEE Marketing in 1997, the family business was generating more than $25 million a year, employing 300 workers.
“You go through life and look back and think about all you’ve accomplished and you want to make sure you’ve got no regrets,” Ewers said. “Everyone wants to know they’re appreciated. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
