In Memoriam
School bids goodbye to three friends

Since last summer, the LBJ School community has lost three close friends and longtime supporters—Lew Wasserman, George E. Christian, Jr., and Walt W. Rostow.

Lew Wasserman—who was described in the New York Times as “the most powerful and influential Hollywood titan in the four decades after World War II”—was one of the founders of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. He died on June 3.

Wasserman, who for more than 50 years was chairman and CEO of MCA Inc., the parent company of Universal Studios, was a generous benefactor of higher education. In 1983 he and his wife Edie donated $500,000 to UT Austin to computerize the operations of the Public Affairs Library. In honor of their gift, the library and media room were named for the Wassermans. Today, the media room is used as the LBJ School’s distance learning site (see related story).

Christian, who died on November 27 and was buried in the Texas State Cemetery on December 2, was a highly regarded writer and public affairs consultant. He served as press secretary to Texas Governors Price Daniel and John Connally and to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was the author of The President Steps Down. A familiar face at the LBJ School, he served as the vice president and vice chairman of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation and was a member of the LBJ School Advisory Council in 1999-2000.

Rostow, an internationally renowned economic historian who served as a national security adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, died February 13. A Rhodes Scholar, he taught economics and history at Columbia, Oxford, Cambridge, and MIT before joining the Kennedy administration in 1961. When he left Washington at the end of the Johnson administration in 1969, he joined the UT Austin faculty as a professor of economics and history, later holding the Rex G. Baker, Jr. Professorship in Political Economy.

In 1992, Rostow and his wife Elspeth—who served as dean of the LBJ School from 1977 to 1983—founded The Austin Project. The initiative called upon government, academic, business, and social service leaders to provide a continuum of services to at-risk populations in Austin to ensure their future health and productivity.

Rostow was the author of more than 30 books, including Concept and Controversy: Sixty Years of Taking Ideas to Market, which will be released in June by the University of Texas Press.

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May 5, 2003
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