The Sam Bloom Memorial Scholarship
The Sam Bloom Memorial Scholarship is awarded by the Dallas Ad League Foundation each Spring to an area student who majors in one of several industries serving the advertising community. It is designed to recognize, promote and encourage academically talented students of advertising and related disciplines by financially helping them complete their college studies. Reflective of the competitive world of business, the monetary award will be granted on a comprehensive basis rather than solely by recommendation of the attending college or university of the recipient.
2010 Sam Bloom Memorial Scholarship
The Dallas Ad League Foundation is proud to again present the Sam Bloom Memorial Scholarship. Sam Bloom was a legendary Dallas ad man, founder of the Bloom Agency and was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 1990.
$2,000 will be awarded to a Dallas area college Sophomore or Junior, or a student pursuing a graduate degree in an advertising or marketing related field.
Applications are due by March 8th at 5pm. Download yours here.
2009 Winner
Mark Travis, a junior at the University of North Texas in the Communication Design Program, has won this year’s Sam Bloom Memorial Scholarship. Mark was selected among 11 entries and was evaluated based on work samples, academic record, recommendations and an essay for application. Applications came from several area schools, including SMU, UNT and UTA. The 11 applicants had industry majors that included journalism, advertising, communication design, marketing and broadcast management.
View Mark’s acceptance letter.
Sam R. Bloom
BLOOM, SAM R. (1904-1983). Sam R. Bloom, advertising executive, was born on January 28, 1904, in Clarksville, Red River County, Texas. His father, a merchant who had immigrated from Germany, had married Fannie Solomon, a native of Fort Worth. Sam grew up in Fort Worth, where he attended high school. At age 17, he became a traveling salesman for Marshall Field and Company, Montgomery Ward, and several wholesale companies. He subsequently became an advertising solicitor for the Fort Worth Record (later the Fort Worth Star-Telegram) and several Scripps-Howard and Hearst newspapers in El Paso and San Antonio. Then in 1924 he took a position at the Dallas Times Herald. He rose in 1941 to the position of advertising director there. He was with the Herald almost thirty years and served on the board of directors of the Herald and its radio and television properties.
When he started his own firm around 1952, Zale Jewelry was one of his primary accounts. He named his new company Sam Bloom Advertising. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy summoned Bloom to Washington to serve at the White House Conference on Equal Employment and the National Advisory Committee on Desegregation. When he returned to Dallas, Bloom called on merchant Stanley Marcus and others to help begin the integration process (see civil-rights movement) and also produced a film, Dallas at the Crossroads, which was shown all over the South by the Dallas Citizens Council. In these efforts, Bloom worked closely with C. A. Tatum, Jr., Robert B. Cullum, Jim Chambers and John Stemmons. Bloom married Evelyn Goldstein of Fort Worth; the couple had two children. He was an active civic leader and was twice president of Temple Emanu-El. His service as president included the era when the majestic temple on Hillcrest in Dallas was built. The Dallas Advertising League named him Ad Man of the Year in 1972 and presented him with the Bill Kerss Award in 1981 for his service to the community. When Sam Bloom died on July 17, 1983, his son Robert assumed the agency's presidency. At the time, Bloom Advertising had billings of $150 million and 350 employees. Bloom was posthumously named to the Advertising Hall of Fame in New York in December 1990.
Bibliography: Natalie Ornish, Pioneer Jewish Texans (Dallas: Texas Heritage, 1989). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.