In the early ’60s, Evan Martin (not his real name), a pharmaceutical sales rep for Bristol Myers Squibb, began having an affair with and eventually married Annie Black.
She was 12.
At the time, Martin, who was in his early 20s, was married to his second wife, June Gamble, and, by all accounts, still married to her when he married Black.
Black was in 7th grade.
Though the story of how their relationship developed is murky— if you want to dignify his abuse of her by calling it a “relationship,” which I don’t — it’s clear Martin had known Black for years. There was some family connection between them, as they both lived in the small New York town of Clinton, where the pharmaceutical giant was located.
Further, as this all occurred six decades ago, nobody was using the word “grooming” to describe it. Martin and Black had two children as husband and wife. She was pregnant at 14 and again at 18.
When news of the affair and subsequent marriage broke, Martin, who had been selling medical supplies — bandages, paper products, surgical gloves — was fired by Squibb.
He then took a job with Hoffmann-La Roche in Nutley, New Jersey, where he was put in charge of selling its new drug Diazepam (trade name Valium), which eventually became the top-selling drug in the 1960s, making the company billions and Martin millions. The drug had such a stamp on that decade that the Rolling Stones wrote a song about it: “Mother’s Little Helper.”
Martin was, in no small measure, the reason for that stamp. He focused on something called proactive outbound sales, a new approach in the industry, which targeted customers who had never engaged with the company and/or its products.
There were a lot of mothers, middle-aged and crazy, who wanted what Martin was selling.
And whereas the medical-supply wing of pharmaceuticals shunned him after his relationship with Black became known, the branch of the industry that sold the actual drugs embraced him.
Martin was a rock star in an industry that was just coming of age.
He was well-liked, flamboyant in a way the profession had never seen, and, because his marriage to Black lasted more than a decade, which gave it a sense of legitimacy, its sleazy beginnings seemed to disappear from institutional memory.
When the marriage in fact ended, Black — who at that point was only slightly older than Martin had been when he married her — claimed Martin “totally physically and mentally” abused her.
But he was a legend in the industry, and she was his third wife.
He had seven.
She was parenthetical.
I bring this up because Martin died recently, and while there was some mention of his marriage to Black, the shamelessness of the hagiography was palpable.
So what is it about successful professionals who skate around the rules of human behavior in plain sight and don’t get called on it? And what of those who don’t do the calling? What of those who sublimate the horror because the horrible have great skill?
To wit, one industry professional said of Martin, “Regardless of what he did in his private life, it was largely overshadowed due, in part, to what the man meant to others in the profession and to the profession itself.”
Regardless?
Another long-time pharmaceutical rep said, “Martin was simply the greatest. He changed pharmaceuticals. He influenced a whole lotta salesman who wouldn’t be salesmen today without him.”
The greatest?
Another salesman, who now consults for pharmaceutical giant Merck, exemplified that when he said, “Without Evan, I wouldn’t have become who I was today.”
A role model?
And still another, who worked for Eli Lilly and Company, tweeted, “RIP Evan — What a man!”
A legend?
Martin will be known for his exceptional selling techniques, his effect on an industry that takes itself way too seriously — and not for grooming, marrying, and abusing a 12-year-old girl.
A couple of things in conclusion.
That entire story above is made up.
But substitute . . .
Rock and roll music for Bristol Myers Squibb
Country music for Hoffman-La Roche
Hernando, Mississippi, for Clinton, New York
Bluesy, country-influenced, hard-pounding style of piano playing for “proactive outbound sales”
Myra Gale Brown for Annie Black
… and you have the story of Jerry Lee Lewis.
Since 2021, according to the health journal Sexual Abuse, there are 127,282 men incarcerated in state prisons for sex offenses involving children. None of them will be eulogized by Elton John or Ringo Starr when they die. Nobody would care that Evan Martin had a killer nickname.
Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. In addition to “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Road Comic,” “Four Days and a Year Later” and “The Joke Was On Me,” his first novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages,” a book about the worst love story ever, was published by Balkan Press in February. See barrysfriedman.com and friedmanoftheplains.com.
From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2022
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