Hello to all,
I wanted to inform you of the sad news that Jerry Russell died Friday. He was a leader in the preservation of Civil War battlefields. He will be sorely missed. His motto was "We Who Study, Must Strive To Save." Let that be our battle cry and Jerry's legacy.
Best from Spokane,
Steve Warren
JERRY L. RUSSELL: HIS JINGLES LEFT MARK ON POLITICAL CONTESTS
BY NOEL E. OMAN ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Saturday, December 06, 2003
Jerry L. Russell, known in Arkansas for the campaign jingles he
concocted for political candidates and nationally as a leading figure
in Civil War battlefield preservation, died Thursday.
The Little Rock man died from complications from lung surgery at St.
Vincent Infirmary Medical Center, said his wife of 34 years, Alice
Russell. He was 70.
Russell was born and raised in Little Rock. He attended the University
of Arkansas, where he obtained an undergraduate degree in journalism,
and he eventually embarked on a career as a public relations executive
and political consultant.
He worked for more than 200 political candidates, from U.S. Senate
hopefuls to would-be city council members, Alice Russell said.
She doesn't remember when Russell created his first jingle.
"We met during a political campaign [in 1969]," she recalled. "He was
doing jingles then."
One tenet of his work she can't forget: "If he could not vote for that
person, he would not work for them, which was an anomaly in the
profession."
If many Arkansans didn't know Russell personally, they knew his work:
ditties promoting a candidate endlessly on the radio.
"For those of us who have experienced Arkansas campaigns during the
last half of the 20th century and for those who study Arkansas
politics in the future, Jerry will always be associated with political
radio jingles," said Stephen Smith, communications professor at the
University of Arkansas.
The jingles were "a salient feature of almost every campaign in which
he was involved - from the "Pin a Rose on Me" mayoral campaign in
North Little Rock to the "John Paul Hammerschmidt Doesn't Deserve to
Be Re-Elected," Smith said by e-mail.
The jingles may have grated the nerves of many a listener, but they
had their intended effect.
"Those jingles would never win a Grammy, but Russell often used them
effectively for candidate name recognition and campaign theme to win
elections," Smith said
The only political races on which he worked that stood out for Russell
were the ones he won, Alice Russell said.
If that was the case, Russell left plenty of memories: He liked to
boast that his candidates, often underdogs, won 70 percent of the
races he worked.
In the 2000 elections, eight of the 10 candidates he represented won
their races.
Political consultancy put food on his table, but Civil War battlefield
preservation was his passion.
"It had to be," his wife said. "He didn't get paid for it."
It was a passion born of the inquisitive mind of an 11-year-old who
saw the words "Battle of Bull Run" and read about it. That interest
became 40-year odyssey around the nation in his quest to preserve
battlefields.
"He's been a towering figure in Civil War battlefield preservation for
decades," said Mark Christ, a spokesman for the Department of Arkansas
Heritage who also coordinates the state's battlefield preservation
efforts. "It's a great loss to the cause."
Among accolades accorded Russell, the most recent was the
Nevins-Freeman Award from the Chicago Civil War Roundtable for
Russell's 40 years of advocacy on behalf of battlefield preservation.
A year earlier the Civil War Preservation Trust, the nation's largest
nonprofit battlefield preservation group, honored him with a lifetime
achievement award.
"He was fighting to protect Civil War battlefields when our cause was
young and our ranks were few," said trust president James Lighthizer
at the time. "Our achievements of today would not have been possible
without the yeoman's work done by Jerry during the past four decades."
This story was published Saturday, December 06, 2003
Copyright (c) 2003, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights
reserved.