The day we spoke with Wilma Grant, there were demonstrations taking place outside her office at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., where she’s spent nearly 30 years leading the Court’s publishing and in-plant printing facility.
“Never a dull moment,” she laughs as she pauses the conversation long enough to close her office door. It’s a passing comment, but when you get to know Wilma Grant—personally or professionally—you’d understand that it’s really an apt description of the life she’s led.
Born to a coal-miner father and a mother who was a registered nurse, Grant spent the first 17 years of her life in her native Scotland. A smart and industrious child, she began school at the tender age of four, and by 14 held her first job: picking potatoes on a farm.
Her father passed away when she was 15, so Grant left school and went to work full-time to bring money into the household. She worked for a time in the office at a local wholesale grocer, and later started her first business, with the help of her older sister.
“I went to school to become a beautician, and when I was 16, my sister and I started our own mobile hairdressing business, where we’d drive around to local homes and [dress] hair. Well, I didn’t drive, my sister did. I was too young,” Grant recalls.
Creating coiffures paid the bills, but Grant envisioned something more exciting for a career. She’d always wanted to travel and see the world, but wasn’t keen on the idea of being a flight attendant, the obvious choice. A friend suggested she join the military.
“I thought perhaps I could bring my skills as a hairdresser to the Royal Air Force, so I joined. But when I applied, they told me I was too young to be a hairdresser. You had to be 21. So they tested me for other things I may be good at, and they choose me and one other girl from my class to do communications,” Grant recalls.
“I worked at the RAF Signals Command Headquarters for three years in England, which was a nice posting. I was working on NATO materials. I learned to punch paper tape, similar to what we used with the old Linotype machines. I had to learn how to read that tape, which was like learning another language. And much of the work I did involved sending messages back and forth between one country or another.”
It was Grant’s first taste of technology, for which she’d hunger throughout her career.
“I loved my military career,” Grant remarks. “I loved the training, the discipline. I learned to respect rank, even if I didn’t respect the person. They taught us that you always salute [uniformed] officers, that it doesn’t matter if you actually respect the person or not. And I’ve used that throughout my life. And we were taught to be ethical, especially in the workplace.”
The Path to Print
Grant’s tenure in the military came to an end when she met a handsome U.S. Air Force corporal who also worked in communications.
“The first time I met him, I knew he was an American, because he had on white socks. They were the only ones who wore white socks back in those days,” she quips. “Anyway, I fell in love, and eventually married him in Scotland. But I was forced to leave the [Royal] Air Force, because even though we were Allies, the British didn’t want me in the service if I was married to a Yank.”
The couple returned to the States, and for a while, Grant worked for AT&T before landing her first printing job at a non-union newspaper in Virginia.
“They said they needed a tele-typesetter, and I wasn’t sure what that was,” she recalls. “But I went to the interview, and the machine seemed similar to what I’d used before. The hardest part for me, coming from another country, was the difference in the spellings here. I had to slow my typing speed down a bit, because I had to keep looking things up.”
During her childhood in Scotland, her father impressed upon her the importance of fair treatment in the workplace, as the coal mining industry is pro-union there.
“The printer’s union had planted a person in the pressroom there, and he signed me up for the International Typographical Union—which I’ve been a member of for 20 years now—and my salary went up from $80...to $146 a week, overnight,” Grant confides.
“That was a lot of money in those days,” she adds. “I remember it, because when I went to my divorce lawyer, she said, ‘Do you realize that you’re in the top three percent of earnings for women in the country?’ It doesn’t sound like a lot today, but in that time, it was.”
Yes, her marriage to the handsome American with white socks came to an end, but not before producing two beautiful daughters, for whom she’s most grateful.
Then, as a single mother charged with supporting her children, Grant held several jobs in commercial and newspaper printing while the girls were young.
“And I survived several strikes,” she recalls. “You begin to see that there are good and bad on both the union and management sides. And I’ve learned a lot from the union environment—especially how to be a good printer. And to sign your name with excellence on everything you do.”
A Court Career Commences
Nearly 30 years ago, Grant faced a dilemma. She received three simultaneous job offers—one with Prudential Insurance, one with the Majority Print Shop on Capitol Hill and the third at The Supreme Court.
“It was two weeks before Christmas, and I took the job [at the Court] so I would have money for Christmas for my two children,” she recalls. “They’d just put in Atex systems, and we loved them.”
The documents and books Grant and her team publish today are voluminous and sensitive.
“We do all of the typesetting for the Court’s case bound volumes, which are the Court’s end product. And we do iterations of those—preliminary prints, which are soft-cover volumes. There are two or three of those [printed] before the bound volume is created.”
The Court’s in-plant is the proud, new owner of a Xerox Nuvera, recently installed following a refurbishing of its production facility. An assortment of other digital printing and finishing equipment supports the diverse types of publications Grant’s team produces—always on a quick-turn basis.
“When you say ‘deadline’ in this industry, it means something. But here, it really means dead line, in some cases,” Grant stresses. She’s referring to the stays of executions granted by The Supreme Court. She shudders at the memory, but recalls one case in which a death-row inmate was minutes from meeting his maker, and Grant was staying late to help produce the stay. Feeling the monumental pressure of the job already, it didn’t help matters when the Linotronic film cassette jammed at the most inopportune time. Under the watchful eyes of a Justice and anxious law clerks, she finally resolved the matter, the stay was printed and justice was served.
Needless to say, the documents Grant and her team help to publish are highly sensitive. Security is of the utmost importance, and there’s quite a rigid workflow in place that dictates precisely how content is created and handed off from Justices to clerks to the in-plant.
Sweeping Effects
The serious, timely and historic nature of the documents she’s responsible for producing doesn’t escape Grant. She’s quick to point out that the publications coming out of the Supreme Court’s in-plant have wide-sweeping effects for the stock market, political debate and international relations.
“I love everything about this job. I love the work; I love the building. It’s a part of American history. And it’s an environment that’s exciting and challenging every day,” Grant stresses.
“I have a wonderfully talented staff here. They have to be multi-talented to work here. It’s a very unique place to work,” she adds.
The in-plant comprises a team of nine, including Grant. And there’s no denying they’re incredibly dedicated workers; they publish and print seven days a week—from 7:00 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays, and 8:00 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the weekends.
“But it’s not about the hours you put in,” she cautions. “It’s about the quality of work you put out.
“We do work under some unusual circumstances,” Grant adds. “The threat of terrorism is always there.”
Before 9/11, Grant could sometimes be found giving colleagues tours of the historic building. On rare occasions, she’d even let her visitors take a peek inside the courtroom, and some of them had the honor of having their photo taken there. Sometimes she’d take people up to what insiders call “the real highest court in the land”—a basketball court above the courtroom.
“A lot of people are quite surprised to find that there,” she says.
Continuing Education
Grant could have easily rested on her laurels. She had plenty of experience in communications and technology from her years in the military and at various printing operations. (And, of course, there was always the beautician certificate to fall back on.) But she wasn’t content with the status quo, and frequently sought out opportunities to broaden her horizons.
“I often took classes at night. Whenever I was off, I’d go to school. I took classes at George Washington University in the Publications Specialist program. I learned desktop publishing with Pagemaker 4.0, and oh my, that was a big deal, because all of the sudden I could actually see what I was creating,” Grant marvels.
She’s taken more courses in printing, systems management, hardware and software than she probably would care to remember. She’s studied Parliamentary Procedure at the University of the District of Columbia. And in 1994, she studied international political economy at the University of Oxford, in England.
When she turned 50, she went back to school yet again, this time earning her MBA from George Mason University—Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, her sponsor, wrote a letter of recommendation to the school on Grant’s behalf.
Grant hasn’t only been dedicated to her own educational pursuit, she’s a big proponent of “giving back” to the industry that’s given her so many opportunities.
“I have always tried to mentor and help people, and I take time to talk to other printers and vendors,” she explains. “If I can help encourage someone to better themselves, it makes me feel good.”
She’s encouraged her staff to continue their education by seeking accreditations.
“It’s an investment,” she explains. “After all, they’re the ones who are going to carry this place forward when I’m gone.”
Over the years, Grant has shared her knowledge and expertise at various industry conferences and seminars. She volunteers her time to a whole slew of industry associations, including Xplor International, the Franklin Technical Society and the Electronic Document Systems Foundation, and she served on the Xplor/Hewlett-Packard Joint Global Technology Council. She is currently chairman of the board of Xplor International, a 2,000-member global organization for publishing industry, IT and other technical professionals. She is in her second year as president of the Association of Reporters of Judicial Decisions (legal publishers). She also serves on the governor of the NOVA 8 Disaster Task Force. Grant received a Pentagon 9/11 Award for logistical support rendered during that disaster.
In what little spare time Grant has these days, she’s perpetually busy with “fun hobbies,” like volunteering with the Toys for Tots Program and the Sterling Volunteer Rescue Squad, for which she hosts dinners for the members and acts as the group’s membership appreciation chair. She plans and hosts the group’s annual awards banquet, and thrives on all the details inherent in event planning.
“I thought about wedding planning as a career, and thought I might be good at that, but I didn’t want to have to put up with all the mothers of the brides and mother-in-laws,” she teases.
There’s No Place Like Home
Wilma Grant’s dreams of traveling the world have come true. She’s visited many countries, often as part of business or educational travel. But despite the many places she’s seen, Grant says Washington, D.C., is where she’ll always call home (when she’s not in Scotland).
“Wow, the impression I got when I first arrived here at Union Station.” she recalls. “Washington is so beautiful. I’ve gone traveling to other places, but I’ve never really wanted to live anywhere else. It’s a city of excitement.”
This month, Wilma Grant will celebrate her 65th birthday. Not only doesn’t she look her age, she doesn’t act it either. She has no plans to retire anytime soon. And you can bet she’ll continue to be very active in philanthropic organizations and print-industry associations. You’ll likely see her on the speaking circuit. And she’ll certainly find time to see more of the world, no doubt making friends—and business contacts—wherever she roams.
“This is an industry that can continually challenge you if you want to be challenged,” Grant asserts. “Sure, there are plenty of people happy to sit on their bums for the rest of their lives, but I would never be content to do that.”
A Supreme In-plant
The day we spoke with Wilma Grant, there were demonstrations taking place outside her office at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., where she’s spent nearly 30 years leading the Court’s publishing and in-plant printing facility.
“Never a dull moment,” she laughs as she pauses the conversation long enough to close her office door. It’s a passing comment, but when you get to know Wilma Grant—personally or professionally—you’d understand that it’s really an apt description of the life she’s led.
Born to a coal-miner father and a mother who was a registered nurse, Grant spent the first 17 years of her life in her native Scotland. A smart and industrious child, she began school at the tender age of four, and by 14 held her first job: picking potatoes on a farm.
Her father passed away when she was 15, so Grant left school and went to work full-time to bring money into the household. She worked for a time in the office at a local wholesale grocer, and later started her first business, with the help of her older sister.
“I went to school to become a beautician, and when I was 16, my sister and I started our own mobile hairdressing business, where we’d drive around to local homes and [dress] hair. Well, I didn’t drive, my sister did. I was too young,” Grant recalls.
Creating coiffures paid the bills, but Grant envisioned something more exciting for a career. She’d always wanted to travel and see the world, but wasn’t keen on the idea of being a flight attendant, the obvious choice. A friend suggested she join the military.
“I thought perhaps I could bring my skills as a hairdresser to the Royal Air Force, so I joined. But when I applied, they told me I was too young to be a hairdresser. You had to be 21. So they tested me for other things I may be good at, and they choose me and one other girl from my class to do communications,” Grant recalls.
“I worked at the RAF Signals Command Headquarters for three years in England, which was a nice posting. I was working on NATO materials. I learned to punch paper tape, similar to what we used with the old Linotype machines. I had to learn how to read that tape, which was like learning another language. And much of the work I did involved sending messages back and forth between one country or another.”
It was Grant’s first taste of technology, for which she’d hunger throughout her career.
“I loved my military career,” Grant remarks. “I loved the training, the discipline. I learned to respect rank, even if I didn’t respect the person. They taught us that you always salute [uniformed] officers, that it doesn’t matter if you actually respect the person or not. And I’ve used that throughout my life. And we were taught to be ethical, especially in the workplace.”
The Path to Print
Grant’s tenure in the military came to an end when she met a handsome U.S. Air Force corporal who also worked in communications.
“The first time I met him, I knew he was an American, because he had on white socks. They were the only ones who wore white socks back in those days,” she quips. “Anyway, I fell in love, and eventually married him in Scotland. But I was forced to leave the [Royal] Air Force, because even though we were Allies, the British didn’t want me in the service if I was married to a Yank.”
The couple returned to the States, and for a while, Grant worked for AT&T before landing her first printing job at a non-union newspaper in Virginia.
“They said they needed a tele-typesetter, and I wasn’t sure what that was,” she recalls. “But I went to the interview, and the machine seemed similar to what I’d used before. The hardest part for me, coming from another country, was the difference in the spellings here. I had to slow my typing speed down a bit, because I had to keep looking things up.”
During her childhood in Scotland, her father impressed upon her the importance of fair treatment in the workplace, as the coal mining industry is pro-union there.
“The printer’s union had planted a person in the pressroom there, and he signed me up for the International Typographical Union—which I’ve been a member of for 20 years now—and my salary went up from $80...to $146 a week, overnight,” Grant confides.
“That was a lot of money in those days,” she adds. “I remember it, because when I went to my divorce lawyer, she said, ‘Do you realize that you’re in the top three percent of earnings for women in the country?’ It doesn’t sound like a lot today, but in that time, it was.”
Yes, her marriage to the handsome American with white socks came to an end, but not before producing two beautiful daughters, for whom she’s most grateful.
Then, as a single mother charged with supporting her children, Grant held several jobs in commercial and newspaper printing while the girls were young.
“And I survived several strikes,” she recalls. “You begin to see that there are good and bad on both the union and management sides. And I’ve learned a lot from the union environment—especially how to be a good printer. And to sign your name with excellence on everything you do.”
A Court Career Commences
Nearly 30 years ago, Grant faced a dilemma. She received three simultaneous job offers—one with Prudential Insurance, one with the Majority Print Shop on Capitol Hill and the third at The Supreme Court.
“It was two weeks before Christmas, and I took the job [at the Court] so I would have money for Christmas for my two children,” she recalls. “They’d just put in Atex systems, and we loved them.”
The documents and books Grant and her team publish today are voluminous and sensitive.
“We do all of the typesetting for the Court’s case bound volumes, which are the Court’s end product. And we do iterations of those—preliminary prints, which are soft-cover volumes. There are two or three of those [printed] before the bound volume is created.”
The Court’s in-plant is the proud, new owner of a Xerox Nuvera, recently installed following a refurbishing of its production facility. An assortment of other digital printing and finishing equipment supports the diverse types of publications Grant’s team produces—always on a quick-turn basis.
“When you say ‘deadline’ in this industry, it means something. But here, it really means dead line, in some cases,” Grant stresses. She’s referring to the stays of executions granted by The Supreme Court. She shudders at the memory, but recalls one case in which a death-row inmate was minutes from meeting his maker, and Grant was staying late to help produce the stay. Feeling the monumental pressure of the job already, it didn’t help matters when the Linotronic film cassette jammed at the most inopportune time. Under the watchful eyes of a Justice and anxious law clerks, she finally resolved the matter, the stay was printed and justice was served.
Needless to say, the documents Grant and her team help to publish are highly sensitive. Security is of the utmost importance, and there’s quite a rigid workflow in place that dictates precisely how content is created and handed off from Justices to clerks to the in-plant.
Sweeping Effects
The serious, timely and historic nature of the documents she’s responsible for producing doesn’t escape Grant. She’s quick to point out that the publications coming out of the Supreme Court’s in-plant have wide-sweeping effects for the stock market, political debate and international relations.
“I love everything about this job. I love the work; I love the building. It’s a part of American history. And it’s an environment that’s exciting and challenging every day,” Grant stresses.
“I have a wonderfully talented staff here. They have to be multi-talented to work here. It’s a very unique place to work,” she adds.
The in-plant comprises a team of nine, including Grant. And there’s no denying they’re incredibly dedicated workers; they publish and print seven days a week—from 7:00 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays, and 8:00 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the weekends.
“But it’s not about the hours you put in,” she cautions. “It’s about the quality of work you put out.
“We do work under some unusual circumstances,” Grant adds. “The threat of terrorism is always there.”
Before 9/11, Grant could sometimes be found giving colleagues tours of the historic building. On rare occasions, she’d even let her visitors take a peek inside the courtroom, and some of them had the honor of having their photo taken there. Sometimes she’d take people up to what insiders call “the real highest court in the land”—a basketball court above the courtroom.
“A lot of people are quite surprised to find that there,” she says.
Continuing Education
Grant could have easily rested on her laurels. She had plenty of experience in communications and technology from her years in the military and at various printing operations. (And, of course, there was always the beautician certificate to fall back on.) But she wasn’t content with the status quo, and frequently sought out opportunities to broaden her horizons.
“I often took classes at night. Whenever I was off, I’d go to school. I took classes at George Washington University in the Publications Specialist program. I learned desktop publishing with Pagemaker 4.0, and oh my, that was a big deal, because all of the sudden I could actually see what I was creating,” Grant marvels.
She’s taken more courses in printing, systems management, hardware and software than she probably would care to remember. She’s studied Parliamentary Procedure at the University of the District of Columbia. And in 1994, she studied international political economy at the University of Oxford, in England.
When she turned 50, she went back to school yet again, this time earning her MBA from George Mason University—Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, her sponsor, wrote a letter of recommendation to the school on Grant’s behalf.
Grant hasn’t only been dedicated to her own educational pursuit, she’s a big proponent of “giving back” to the industry that’s given her so many opportunities.
“I have always tried to mentor and help people, and I take time to talk to other printers and vendors,” she explains. “If I can help encourage someone to better themselves, it makes me feel good.”
She’s encouraged her staff to continue their education by seeking accreditations.
“It’s an investment,” she explains. “After all, they’re the ones who are going to carry this place forward when I’m gone.”
Over the years, Grant has shared her knowledge and expertise at various industry conferences and seminars. She volunteers her time to a whole slew of industry associations, including Xplor International, the Franklin Technical Society and the Electronic Document Systems Foundation, and she served on the Xplor/Hewlett-Packard Joint Global Technology Council. She is currently chairman of the board of Xplor International, a 2,000-member global organization for publishing industry, IT and other technical professionals. She is in her second year as president of the Association of Reporters of Judicial Decisions (legal publishers). She also serves on the governor of the NOVA 8 Disaster Task Force. Grant received a Pentagon 9/11 Award for logistical support rendered during that disaster.
In what little spare time Grant has these days, she’s perpetually busy with “fun hobbies,” like volunteering with the Toys for Tots Program and the Sterling Volunteer Rescue Squad, for which she hosts dinners for the members and acts as the group’s membership appreciation chair. She plans and hosts the group’s annual awards banquet, and thrives on all the details inherent in event planning.
“I thought about wedding planning as a career, and thought I might be good at that, but I didn’t want to have to put up with all the mothers of the brides and mother-in-laws,” she teases.
There’s No Place Like Home
Wilma Grant’s dreams of traveling the world have come true. She’s visited many countries, often as part of business or educational travel. But despite the many places she’s seen, Grant says Washington, D.C., is where she’ll always call home (when she’s not in Scotland).
“Wow, the impression I got when I first arrived here at Union Station.” she recalls. “Washington is so beautiful. I’ve gone traveling to other places, but I’ve never really wanted to live anywhere else. It’s a city of excitement.”
This month, Wilma Grant will celebrate her 65th birthday. Not only doesn’t she look her age, she doesn’t act it either. She has no plans to retire anytime soon. And you can bet she’ll continue to be very active in philanthropic organizations and print-industry associations. You’ll likely see her on the speaking circuit. And she’ll certainly find time to see more of the world, no doubt making friends—and business contacts—wherever she roams.
“This is an industry that can continually challenge you if you want to be challenged,” Grant asserts. “Sure, there are plenty of people happy to sit on their bums for the rest of their lives, but I would never be content to do that.”