Ronald "Ronnie" NIEF

Ronald Nief

Ron's 2011 Autobiography

Graduated from Boston College in 1965 and spent a year in the music business in NYC working with Mercury Records and Quincy Jones. (Spent the Great Northeast Blackout in the fall of 1965 sleeping on his couch). I did some writing during that time and, as the result of a chance meeting with Mark Reindorf, got a chance to show some of it to the head of the PR division at BBDO Advertising in New York and was hired as a PR account executive. After a few years, the agency decided to dissolve the department and Boston College asked me to come back to Boston to build their public relations department. This started four decades of work in higher education that took me to Brandeis University, Boston University, Clark University and then 20 years at Middlebury College in Vermont.

In 1996 I came to Beloit College in Southern Wisconsin where I spent 14 creative years before retiring and being named Director Emeritus of Public Affairs. While at Beloit, I created the Beloit College Mindset List, now in its 14^th year that is reported all over the world each August. My literary partner Tom McBride and I will publish our book, The Mindset Lists of American History (John Wiley and Sons) this July. In addition to writing right now, I am a founding producer of the Beloit International Film Festival.

I was married in 1973 and have a son, who lives in Burlington, Vt., and a daughter (and three grandchildren) in Myrtle Beach, S.C. I was divorced in 2009. My sister Margot (Kramer) has lived in Weston for the past 20 years which has allowed me the occasional opportunity to watch the old benchmarks and landmarks of Westport shift and eventually disappear like the sand on Compo’s South Beach. There is still a warm feeling however walking down Main Street and cutting through Bill’s Smoke Shop….or is that gone now too.

Ron’s Update (2021)

After retiring from Beloit I lived on campus for several more years and Tom and I continued speaking around the country and published a second book, The Mindset List of the Obscure, a collection of essays on some mid-century cultural touchstones of the boomer generation from The A&P and Arthur Godfrey to Your Hit Parade and the Zapruder film. (Sourcebooks, 2014).

In 2015, we moved to Madison, closer to the concerts, lectures, clubs, demonstrations, and restaurants we enjoy and, since the Plague hit in 2019. from which we have been cut off. Now, armed with fresh new covid vaccine shots, we look to the future with great expectations.

In 2019 we sold the rights to The Mindset List to Marist College in New York.

In the past year, I have lost three close friends with whom I shared unique relationships and experiences that only they understood. It has reminded me of how critical certain communities are in your life--people who understand the special references and share in the emotions brought on by shared experiences. It will be good to share elements of our lives when we Zoom together...we enjoy a special frame of reference.