Barbara Read delighted Dayton's with her Santabear book

Barbara Read, a former advertising copywriter at the old Dayton Hudson Department Store Co., helped give Dayton's national clout with her book about a Santabear.

Read, whose book complemented the popular Santabear stuffed animal in the 1980s, died of Alzheimer's disease on March 30 in her hometown of Wheat Ridge, Colo. She was 76.

The longtime Minnetonka resident moved to Colorado in 2005 to live near family.

In 1985, Dayton's marketing crew launched the gift bear with great success, and the following Christmas season they wanted a TV show in the holiday marketing mix.

Story lines were sought from published authors, but Read's book proposal was chosen as the basis of the film "Santabear's First Christmas," shown on network TV.

Her work also became a book published by B. Dalton.

In November 1986, Twin Cities Magazine told the story of the marketing coup pulled off by Dayton Hudson creative types, including Read.

Read grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and graduated from the University of Iowa in 1953 with a journalism degree. She took a job in the advertising department of Better Homes and Gardens magazine in Des Moines.

She married and raised her children, moving to Minneapolis and Omaha, and back to the Twin Cities in the late 1950s.

In the early 1970s, she got a job with Dayton's, where she wrote ads, many of which told a story, or set a certain mood, said her daughter, Katy Read of Oak Park, Ill., a freelance writer. "She enjoyed the creative aspect of writing ads," Katy Read said.

Read once was nominated for a Clio Award, the annual awards honoring creative advertising, said her daughter.

She also painted, selling her work at art fairs in the metro area.

Read was divorced from James Read. He died in 1996.

In addition to Katy and John, she is survived by her brother, John Boyd of Athens, Ga., and three grandchildren.