Wilma Grant

Printing Industries of America has selected an in-plant manager to receive its 2010 Naomi Berber Award, which recognizes a woman in the printing industry who has an outstanding record of accomplishments. Wilma Grant, who heads up the U.S. Supreme Court’s publishing and in-plant printing facility in Washington, D.C., was presented with the award last month in San Francisco at PIA’s fall administrative meetings.

“When you say ‘deadline’ in this industry, it means something. But here, it really means ‘dead’ line, in some cases,” says Wilma Grant, publications manager for the U.S. Supreme Court, in an article in the February issue of In-Plant Graphics. She’s referring to the stays of executions granted by The Supreme Court. In the IPG article, Grant 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, under the watchful eyes of a Justice and anxious clerks. Find out what happened and read the full story in our February issue.

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