Russell, Jan Jarboe 1951-

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RUSSELL, Jan Jarboe 1951-

PERSONAL: Born 1951; married (husband is a doctor); children: Maury, Tyler.

ADDRESSES: Home—San Antonio, TX. Offıce—San Antonio Express-News, 400 Third St., San Antonio, TX 78287-2171. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Journalist, author, and educator. San Antonio Express-News (formerly San Antonio Express), San Antonio, TX, columnist, 1981-85 and 2000—; Texas Monthly, Austin, TX, was contributing editor, became writer at large; King Features, nationally syndicated columnist, 2001—. American Society of Newspaper Editors High School Journalism Institute, University of Texas at Austin, visiting and professional lecturer.

AWARDS, HONORS: Nieman fellow, Harvard University, 1984.

WRITINGS:

(With Kemper Diehl) Cisneros: Portrait of a New American, Corona Publishing (San Antonio, TX), 1984.

(With Mark Langford and Cathy Smith) San Antonio: A Cultural Tapestry, captions by Patti Larsen, Towery Publishing (Memphis, TN), 1998.

Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson, Scribner (New York, NY), 1999.

(With others) Dreaming Red: Creating ArtPace, Distributed Art Publishers (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to numerous publications, including Good Housekeeping, New York Times, and Slate.

SIDELIGHTS: Texas-based journalist Jan Jarboe Russell is best known for her syndicated columns, her writing for both the San Antonio Express-News and Texas Monthly magazine, and for her biography of former First Lady Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson. The biography began when Russell wrote a cover story about the former first lady for Texas Monthly in 1994. Inspired by the topic, she went on to interview nearly two hundred people, including Johnson herself, in order to write Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson.

Johnson's husband, Lyndon Baines Johnson—or LBJ as he was often called—was a career politician who was elected John F. Kennedy's vice president in 1960. When Kennedy was assassinated three years later, Johnson ascended to the presidency. Until Johnson retired from political life in 1968, Lady Bird was constantly by his side, supporting him both politically and personally. Even after Johnson's death in 1973, Lady Bird defended her husband in the face of extramarital affairs he was rumored to have had.

After sixty hours of interviews with Lady Bird, Russell broached the subject of President Johnson's affairs, and the former first lady abruptly ceased cooperating with her. "Your conclusion about me may well come at Lyndon's expense," Johnson wrote in a letter to Russell formally breaking off the interviews. "There is no way to separate us and our roles in each other's lives." Besides, Johnson wrote, "The public should weigh what public servants are doing, not their private, innermost feelings." "I was terrified," Russell told Austin American-Statesman interviewer Anne Morris about receiving that letter. "I thought: how can I recover from this? I've really blown it." But Russell did recover. Russell integrated her interviews with Lady Bird and interviews she "conducted with everyone who was anyone in the Johnson administration," asRob Stout noted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Despite the termination of the former first lady's cooperation, Lady Bird "should stand as the definitive biography [of Johnson] for years to come," Rick Tamble wrote in the Tennessean.

Russell remained highly respectful of her subject despite their estrangement, most reviewers noticed. Austin American-Statesman critic Dick Holland went even further, declaring that "this portrait is more than sympathetic: it dramatically portrays Mrs. Johnson not only as the crucial support to the often-impossible LBJ, but also as a major player who herself shaped and influenced events." Yvonne Crittenden of the Toronto Sun reached a similar conclusion, noting that Johnson "comes off as a gutsy, intelligent and accomplished woman" in Lady Bird.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, September 26, 1999, Caroline Heldman, review of Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson, p. L13.

Austin American-Statesman, July 13, 1999, Dick Holland, review of Lady Bird, p. E1; July 13, 1999, Anne Morris, interview with Russell, p. E1; January 23, 2000, Anne Morris, review of Lady Bird, p. K6.

Booklist, August, 1999, Mary Carroll, review of Lady Bird, p. 2016.

Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS), September 5, 1999, Joe White, review of Lady Bird, p. G4.

Florida Times Union, September 24, 1999, Jules Wagman, review of Lady Bird, p. 3.

Fresno Bee, September 26, 1999, Carolyn Barta, review of Lady Bird, p. E3.

Green Bay Press-Gazette, August 29, 1999, Jean Peerenboom, review of Lady Bird, p. D5.

Houston Chronicle, July 18, 1999, Shelby Hodge, review of Lady Bird, p. 2; July 23, 1999, Maxine Mesinger, review of Lady Bird, p. 1; August 29, 1999, Elizabeth Bennett, review of Lady Bird, p. 23.

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1999, review of Lady Bird, p. 947.

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, October 13, 1999, Art Chapman, review of Lady Bird, p. K0964.

Library Journal, April 1, 1985, Mark K. Jones, review of Cisneros: Portrait of a New American, p. 133.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 8, 1999, Rob Stout, review of Lady Bird, p. E13.

New York Times Book Review, October 31, 1999, Julia Douglas, review of Lady Bird, p. 24.

People, September 20, 1999, Rob Stout, review of Lady Bird, p. 57.

Publishers Weekly, February 15, 1985, review of Cisneros, p. 90.

San Antonio Business Journal, September 28, 2001, Michele Krier, "Local Columnist Jan Jarboe Russell to be Syndicated Nationally," p. 15.

Tennessean, August 22, 1999, Rick Tamble, review of Lady Bird, p. K5.

Toronto Sun, October 24, 1999, Yvonne Crittenden, review of Lady Bird.

Virginian Pilot, October 17, 1999, Jonathan Yardley, review of Lady Bird, p. E4.