Back In Circulation

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Once a major magazine takes sick, it usually requires herculean efforts -- and massive infusions of capital -- to rescue it. Sometimes the treatment fails -- R.I.P., for example, Look, Collier's, and The Saturday Review. But Time Inc., in New York City, managed to retrieve Life from the grave, and The Saturday Evening Post was revivified by Mrs. Cory SerVaas, an apron-maker from Indiana.

By whom from where.7

Well, it wasn't that the short, fiftyish Indianapolitan was any Katherine Craham. It is just that, one day, the American-as-apple-pie periodical, started by Benjamin Franklin in 1728 as The Pennsylvania Gazette, and renamed The Saturday Evening Post in 1821, happened to fall her way. And when it landed, The Post proved to be just what the doctor (she has a medical degree from Indiana University) ordered to fulfill her aspirations of becoming a medical missionary. "Religion and health," says Dr. SerVaas of her editorial direction, "go hand in hand." They also lead to readership. During the past three years, circulation has grown to 750,000 from 475,000, on a nine-times-a-year basis, with a cool million in sight when the magazine goes monthly as expected.

Not only did Cory and her husband, Beurt, a publisher of children's magazines, acquire The Saturday Evening Post that day in 1970, they bought the whole Curtis Publishing Co. empire -- for what that was worth. At the time, it was not very much. The Post had gone through five presidents, four editors, and $67 million in losses. It owed $20 million in back taxes, $20 million in unpaid debts, and faced libel suits seeking $400 million. The 50-plus attorneys who were then overseeing the corporation's affairs wondered whether Beurt might be interested in taking on the entire show, rather than simply Curtis's hallowed Jack & Jill magazine, which he iuitially sought. It was like asking if he wanted to book passage on tbe Titanic after it hit the iceberg, but Beurt saw some glitter in the wreckage.

Handily, there was some cash from Cory's apron operations. The patented product -- an overgarment that is held up by a plastic hoop, rather than having to be tied from the rear -- isn't a high-tech item, but it has some interesting applications: snap-on napkins for nursing homes, grass skirts for Hawaiian tourists. So many, in fact, that now chief executive officer Cory's SerVaas Laboratories Inc. enjoys annual revenues in the millions. There was enough, together with Beurt's contributions, to buy the Curtis heirs' shares -- lock, stock, and barrel.

The stock part cost only 5 cents a share, and there were some 3 million shares outstanding. To acquire controlling interest required only $150,000. To keep the company afloat and help meet its obligations, the SerVaases sold off Curtis's printing plant, fulfillment, and book divisions, and mineral rights to a forest it owned.

Cory took over as publisher and editor, and The Post resumed in the summer of 1971 as a quarterly. Although it retained some of its old-time appeal -- a Tugboat Annie story now and again, and the "Hazel" cartoon -- it has truly become a mission. There are articles on arthritis, diabetes, and cancer, and profiles of evangelists and gospel singers.

"I do everything," Cory jokes, "from writing departments to sweeping out the building." The magazine not only inundates readers with medical advice, it also has conducted extensive studies on certain diseases, has sponsored stop-smoking programs, and underwrites basic cancer research. Now, Cory takes more pride in her thank-you letters than she does in her audited circulation figures.

"I've always felt very indebted to the Lord for what's been given to me," she observes. "My [apron] patent enabled me to do whatever I wanted to do: I really had it all -- children, a home, a pool, 24 acres of grass for them to play on. And I wanted to do something with the rest of my life that really had great meaning."

In January 1982, in order to attract volunteer workers and donations for their mission, the SerVaases sold The Post to a nonprofit foundation, The Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, of which Cory is the chairman. "I just want to be able to do more and more," she says.