Landon Y. Jones (1943-2024)

The memorial service was held on Friday, November 15th @ 1:30pm at the Princeton University Chapel, and a reception followed the service. See the Classmate Sightings page for photos and the video. Also click here for the November 18 PAW story.

Lanny's daughter Cassie sent this mail on the morning of August 18:

Dear Friends of Lanny and Sarah,

We are heartbroken to write that our father passed away peacefully yesterday (Saturday, August 17th) at around 6:15pm. He was hospitalized late Wednesday night with an infection after dealing with some increasing belly pain. Unfortunately, given how weak he already was, he developed sepsis and though we had some renewed hope on Friday night that things were improving, by yesterday morning it became clear that even Lanny, who managed to beat the odds time and time again, would not be able to withstand the severity of the infection/sepsis.

We are incredibly grateful that we were all able to be with him in his last days and that our Mom and all three of us kids were at his bedside during his final hours. Even in his last days he was saying "I want to be with you all and I want to write a book." We all hope to carry his eternal optimism with us forever and we certainly know that he will be with us forever.

One thing that became even clearer in this last year is how much he really loved his friends. Thank you all for your friendship and support of both our dad and of our whole family during this difficult year. We will be in touch with details about a memorial service, which we expect to take place later this fall in Princeton.

In the meantime, we send you all love and hope that your memories of Lanny will brighten a day when the world feels distinctly less bright.

With the deepest gratitude for his beautiful life and all the love you offered him -

Warmly,

Cassie, Beca and Landon

At Princeton and Beyond

Lanny came to Princeton as one of a sizeable contingent from the Saint Louis Country Day School. At Princeton, he was an editor with The Daily Princetonian, served as the Princeton Alumni Weekly On-the-Campus columnist, and played freshman soccer. Lanny majored in English, was a member of Colonial Club, and his roommates included Jim Merritt, Sandy Martin, Ham Shields, Dave Ames, David Stewart, Rob Purrington, and others who came and went. Following graduation, Lanny served Princeton on the PAW Board of Editorial Direction, as a member of the Alumni Council, as chair of the John Maclean Fellowship Committee, as a member of the English department’s advisory board, and as a board member of the Friends of the Princeton University Library.

Following graduation, Lanny served as Spec 4, U.S. Army Reserve, 1968–1974.

After serving as PAW editor from 1969 to 1974, Lanny's journalism career continued at Time, Inc. He held posts as Managing Editor of People and Money magazines. His books include Great Expectations: America & the Baby Boom Generation (1980 - in which the term "baby boomer" first appeared) and Celebrity Nation: How America Evolved into a Culture of Fans and Followers, for which Publisher's Weekly called him "an astute chronicler of celebrity culture." The Essential Lewis and Clark (Lewis & Clark Expedition) and William Clark and the Shaping of the West were the result of his deep interest in the American west. Lanny has written numerous guest columns for the Wall Street Journal and other important publications. Awards include the New York Press Club Award for Travel Writing, "On the Trail of Nabokov in the American West," New York Times, May 2016. The video of his April, 2023 '66 Tiger Talk, "Celebrity and its Discontents" is available here on the class website. Check Lanny's website for more about his publications.

In his 45th Reunion essay, Lanny wrote:

"I often think about something my biographical subject, William Clark, wrote in his 63rd year, to his son George Rogers Hancock Clark: 'Do not suffer yourself to be unhappy from misfortunes or disappointments. We all have to meet them and should bear them with firmness, resolved to use every exertion to better our situation, and gain the good will of our fellow Creatures. My children are now my first consideration, and to see them &c will be a consideration in my old age not to be equaled by other events.'”

Lanny's New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Tap Into Princeton, Planet Princeton, PAW, Town Topics, and Mather-Hodge Funeral Home obituaries add more information about Lanny's career and Princeton activities. One notes that Lanny was honored with the 2015 Time, Inc. Lifetime Achievement Award. The October PAW followed with a Farewell to Lanny Jones ’66, a Princeton Original.

Lanny, with his wife Sarah and three children (Cassie, Beca and Landon), was a long-time resident of Princeton at 20 Hibben Road. The family also enjoyed summers in Bozeman, MT. There are six grandchildren: Jane Lillian Urciuoli, 2001; Nina Crane Urciuoli, 2004; Luke Deskins Jones, 2006; Adam Edmondson Jones, 2008; Wren Maitland Wethli, 2014; Reed Bright Wethli, 2017.

Lanny was active in town, university, and '66 affairs, and he sponsored events at his home for the Class of 2016 "grandchildren" interested in journalism (PAW article here). The class website has numerous entries about his activities and contributions, and the classmate tributes below contain countless memories.

Nassau Herald

Lanny's mother, Ellen Edmondson Jones, was one of the last surviving '66 parents and passed away at the age of 103 in 2021. From the Nassau Herald, one might easily suspect that Lanny was actually a Mugwump, but perhaps he planned to start a new political party.

From the Reunion Books

50th Reunion

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE WAYWARD PURSE

On the last night of my honeymoon in Europe in 1970, I was stabbed. Happily, I was not stabbed by my wife. Less happily, I was stabbed by someone intending to inflict upon me great bodily harm. At the time I dismissed it as an unfortunate but freakish incident. Only now has it become more clear what it really was: a strange combination of terrorism and farce.

It was in London, of all places. To celebrate the finale of our six-week honeymoon, Sarah and I had dinner with friends at a fancy restaurant in Soho. I know it must have been fancy because I recognized the rosy-cheeked actor Sir John Gielgud sitting at an adjacent table.

After dinner, we were strolling back to our bed & breakfast when, suddenly, there was crack of a huge explosion, sending reverberations echoing in the streets. Down the block we could see flames and smoke erupting from a car. As I later learned, it was one of many bombs I.R.A. terrorists exploded in London during “the Troubles” in the 1970s.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said. But my friends were curious. What’s going on? Perhaps we could help someone. So we joined a melee of people rushing down the street toward the accident.

As we got closer, then suddenly, pandemonium. A group of men leaped from a car and attacked another man who had been attempting to direct traffic away from the scene of the explosion. They knocked him down and then circled around him, kicking him.

I knew I had to do something . . . but what? As it happened, I was carrying my wife’s purse under my arm, as I often do for security in the middle of crowds. So, bizarrely, I grabbed the only weapon I had: the purse. Holding its handle, I swung it at the attackers, hitting at least one of them.

The force of the blow broke the handle, and the purse flew spinning down the street with all of our valuables, traveler’s checks, and passports. Sarah assessed the situation correctly and abandoned me in order to retrieve her purse, which she quickly did.

But, meanwhile, the attackers were so appalled at being attacked by an American wielding a purse that they stopped pummeling the man on the street and turned on me, fists swinging. I backed quickly into the crowd, which seemed to discourage them, so they retreated.

As I stood gasping, a woman approached me and said in a distinct Cockney accent, “Hey, mate, I saw ’em stick ya.” She pointed at my side.

I pulled up my sweater and, sure enough, there was a puncture wound on my right waist in the area generally called “lover’s handles.” Fortunately, my lover’s handles were ample enough to offer some protection. The wound was not bleeding badly, so I dismissed it for the time being.

It was not until we got back to our room that my friend’s wife, who was a nurse, looked at it more closely and decided I should go to an emergency room. Soon I found myself on a gurney in the legendary Charing Cross Hospital, beloved by Sherlock Holmes fans like me.

“What happened?” the doctor asked me. I was not about to get caught up in some police investigation of the bombing so I took the easy way out. “Oh, just an accident with a knife while cooking dinner,” I claimed. He nodded. After probing and cleaning the wound, he stitched it up with what I later learned was catgut.

As I lay on the gurney, staring at the ceiling, I felt relieved. It looked as if we would be able to make our flight, after all. Then a badge flashed in front of my eyes.

“O’Shaussney, Scotland Yard.”

Scotland Yard??!!

I was being interviewed as part of the investigation. I decided to come clean. So I admitted to pathetically trying to use a purse to defend the man being beaten on the street. The detective from Scotland Yard smiled and told me the victim of the beating was an off-duty policeman. I had helped him by distracting the thugs. I had done a good turn.

He then suggested that I come to the police station and make a statement. Which I did cheerfully.

The next morning we were on the way home. We later found $50 missing from the purse. And I still have a little scar on my lover’s handle.

55th Reunion

As I write this, it feels as if I have fallen asleep and woken up in Virtual America.

It was a tough year on all educators and students, and our family is full of them. In Maine, our granddaughter Wren, the older child of our daughter Cassie and her husband, Mark, just began kindergarten — virtually. Our daughter Beca and her husband, Christian, somehow guided their schools in New York through the pandemic: Beca as head of the lower school at Nightingale-Bamford, Christian teaching math at Sacred Heart. Their daughter Jane had an interrupted year at Bowdoin College, as Nina did at Nightingale-Bamford.

Our son, Landon, carries out his duties remotely at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Philly as an assistant U.S. attorney, as did his wife, Beth, as a school administrator. Their sons, Luke and Adam, carried on at Greene Street Friends.

I continue to write freelance pieces, most recently for the Wall Street Journal about Albert Camus and T.S. Eliot. They are encased in amber on my website, www.lannyjones.com.

Sarah and I missed going to our refuge in Bozeman, Mont., for the second straight summer. I continue to mend from my bone-marrow transplant (April 2019) and have learned to treasure walks in Princeton’s Marquand Park with Sarah during the year of our 50th anniversary.

We both take great comfort from our friends, especially those from the Great Class of ’66.

As Ram Dass said 50 years ago, “We are all just walking each other home.

Memories and Tributes

Jim Merritt:

I met Lanny in the fall of freshman year 62 years ago. He and I and Sandy Martin roomed together for three years, as sophomores in first entry Holder and as juniors and seniors in fifth entry Blair. He was part of the Saint Louis Country Day contingent and introduced me to Nancy Russell, another Saint Louisan and my wife of 57 years. We’ve lived close to Lanny and Sarah since the 1970s, and our kids and theirs grew up together. They are godparents to our daughter Jenn and we are godparents to their daughter Cassie.

From the get-go he had an astonishing gift for friendship. I can count all my best friends on one hand, while Lanny needed all four appendages and he’d just be getting started. And as so many classmates can attest, he enjoyed nothing more than helping his friends.

If family and friends were first in his heart, Princeton and the Class of ’66 were not far behind. He edited PAW for five years, 1969-74, edited our 10th reunion book, and produced our memorable 50th reunion video, “Looking Back.” He compiled the class surveys for our 10th, 25th, 40th, and 50th reunions and was looking forward to doing it again for our 60th.

It was Lanny, in 1975, when I was working as an editor and reporter at The Press of Atlantic City and casting about for the next move in my fledgling journalism career, who told me about an opening in the communications office at Princeton. I applied for the job and wound up working at Princeton for the next 25 years in a succession of positions, culminating as editor of PAW. Lanny by then had moved on to People but had stayed connected to Princeton.

It was Lanny, in 1999, when I’d decided to take early retirement from Princeton and was looking for freelance gigs, who told me that the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, based in Great Falls, Mont., was looking for a new editor for its quarterly magazine, “We Proceeded On" (WPO). I had a longstanding interest in the American West and the Lewis and Clark expedition and had been a member of the Foundation since 1980. Lanny had joined the Foundation just a couple of years before but being Lanny was totally plugged in — he was serving on the planning committee for the upcoming Lewis & Clark Bicentennial. So it was thanks to Lanny that I learned they were looking for an editor for WPO, a magazine I edited for the next seven years.

Lanny endured a harrowing bone-marrow transplant in 2019 at age 75. It bought him another five years with family and friends and enabled him to complete his last book, “Celebrity Nation.” Health wise it was a rocky five years, with setbacks and several long hospital stays and at times acute discomfort and pain. But you’d never know it. His courage and attitude were inspirational. He took every day as a gift and was upbeat and forward looking to the end.

I was fortunate enough to visit with Lanny at his home on August 8, 10 days before he died. He was lying in the hospital bed set up in the downstairs study. He was tired, having just completed a physical therapy session that consisted of sitting on the side of the bed and holding the position for 20 minutes. It was agonizing, he said: “I have no muscle mass.” We talked about life, noting how fortunate we were for the lives we've had. We went through his phone looking at photos of his kids and grandkids at A-Bar-A Ranch in Wyoming, where he and Sarah had taken them for years — now they were there without them. I’d brought him some fresh corn purchased from a local farm stand, which he greatly appreciated — “I love corn!” I left feeling good, not realizing it would be our last goodbye.

John Heminway

Lanny died far too young. I don’t say this about every one of my contemporaries. I reserve it for Lanny because of his valued support of so many— fellow writers, Princeton students and ’66 classmates. For someone in my profession, I say it because he had yet another book in him, and we writers are always smitten by talk of an unfinished work. Lanny’s oeuvre-to-be was no exception. He told me the book would document and explain the contribution of mid-Westerners to the great pool of American creativity—men and women from the midriff of our nation who taught the world what it was to be an American. Consider Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Kurt Vonnegut, Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Georgia O’Keefe. Now add to this list Landon Y. Jones, Jr., formerly of St. Louis, Missouri.

Lanny and I shared much: St. Louis (on my mother’s side),Princeton class of ’66 (naturally), writing and Montana. Our friendship began at Princeton where I admired his work as a journalist at a time when it eclipsed my own sputtering career. And then—mostly from afar-- I had to endure his fame, as the managing editor and originator of a little-known magazine. Maybe you have heard of it. People. And then there was the business of him coining the expression Baby Boomer. On and on it went, achievement after achievement, after I strove to keep up. Maddening!

Montana put a gloss on our friendship. When he taught an English class at Montana State University, he paid me the great compliment of asking me to conduct one of his seminars. And then there was that snowy November 2008 night in Bozeman when he and Sarah invited friends to their house to watch Barack Obama invoke those spine-tingling words: “if there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible…” An indelible evening with much cheering and an excess of libations.

Lanny and I fished together on the West Boulder and then I helped him promote his important work about William Clark in the tiny town of Martinsdale. We enjoyed many meals together and my wife and I accepted several invitations to stay with the Jones in Princeton.

My most memorable time with Lanny? It must be when he came to our house in 2021 to meet our daughter and three of her friends, glowing women from Asia. All were in their sophomore year at Princeton. Overcome with joy, Lanny interviewed them individually. I could tell he was proud that Princeton spotted their promise. I could also tell that the ladies were enchanted to meet this famous magazine editor and author. All they wanted was to hear about his career and to learn from it. And in his quiet, self-deprecating way, Lanny delivered the goods. He gave them a tutorial about endeavor, luck and the joy of words. This was a moment they would never forget.

Thank you, dear friend. Just know your legacy lives on, enriching not only the lives of your old pals, but the generations.

Jon Holman:

I was gobsmacked to hear of Lanny's death. Not because it was surprising; after all, he had been very ill for several years, and there were several points along the way when he surprised us all by surviving. But his spirit was so irrepressible that it just seemed inconsistent with everything I knew that he was gone. It was like losing a brother, not just a friend. I didn't know him as well as his oldest friends, the guys from Saint Louis Country Day, but to know Lanny at any point in his life was to feel the warmth of his friendship.

Lanny's biography will be dealt with elsewhere in this memorial. He was spectacularly successful in many segments of the publishing industry, both on the business and creative side. He is credited with coining the phrase Baby Boomer, and of course he wrote the book about our celebrity culture, a culture which he unequivocally helped create (and for which he delightedly took both credit and blame). No doubt his obituaries will be long and magnificent.

But this doesn't tell the story of Lanny. To me, Lanny was the very definition of kindness. Maybe Sarah will tell me someday that he used to come home and kick the dog out of frustration with this or that, but I doubt it. To my observation he always defaulted to being kind, propping someone up, remembering when someone should be included or complimented. He took such relish out of living. I remember when he sent me the photos for the '66 Archive of himself dressing up as Einstein at multiple Halloween parties at the Institute for Advanced Study. It was obvious that doing such things gave him such glee. And to see how in spite of terrible illness he pushed through to complete his book, clearly a labor of love, was to understand that beneath that kindness and glee was the heart of a lion.

We are so much the poorer that he's gone.

Princeton AlumniCorps:

Landon served two terms on the AlumniCorps Board and remained an AlumniCorps supporter ever since. "Lanny was instrumental in working with AlumniCorps when changing the name from Princeton Project 55 to Princeton AlumniCorps. He headed a committee while I was President of 55er's and advertising experts etc. They worked over 6 months to craft a name which would honor '55 but attract younger Princetonians. A remarkable job." - Bill Leahy '66

Tiny Morgan:

Lanny was one of the mainstays of our Class. I met him our first week at Princeton; he was one of the many Saint Louis guys who migrated to New Jersey. He always talked fast but thought even faster. Frankly I was intimidated. But he also had a lively sense of humor; he couldn’t even go on his honeymoon without some extra excitement.

Lanny and Sarah were active supporters of ’66. They hosted an after P-rade party at their home. Lanny was so gracious and so prolific.

I will miss him dearly. God bless Sarah and the family.

Tom Tureen:

Lanny was interested in people. What they did, why they did it, and how what they did impacted other people’s lives. This, coupled with his prodigious intelligence, boundless energy and clarity of expression made him the obvious choice for editor of People magazine. I can’t imagine that he got the job by anything other than acclimation. And regardless where he was or what he was doing, and even as his illnesses progressed, he always made his family, his classmates, and his friends feel as though he had all the time in the world for them.

Bill Leahy:

I saw Lanny three weeks ago at his home in Princeton..his passing yesterday is merciful given the diminished quality of his life witnessed weeks ago. His wife, Sarah and children Cassie, Rebecca and Landon are in our prayers as they seek peace after a most challenging year.

Here are some reflections of my life and Lanny.

We met in 1964, Jody Kretzmann and Lanny worked at the Prince and nightly inhabited our dorm. Lanny and a group of Midwesterners lived in the 5th entry of Blair junior and senior years. We have remained friends for the past 5 decades. During this time Lanny remained always curious, creative and always willing to listen and make experienced suggestions for any projects related to our class or the University. His wife, Sarah, introduced to Lanny by Jody has remained his soulmate and the individual giving him comfort and strength during his protracted illness.

Lanny's journalist career is stellar and throughout his career he remained focused upon his children, Cassie, Rebecca and Landon, his Class and his University.

Several decades ago, I served on the board of Project 55, ultimately transformed into AlumniCorps. At times of transition, Lanny was always willing to bring his experience, creativity and interest to assist as a board member.

His love of the West and history lead to his writing about William Clark and various topics of history in the West. His home in Bozeman, like his home in Princeton was always welcome for friends and visitors.

Lanny was innately curious and his curiosity was contagious..like his friendship and his optimism.

I will miss his curiosity, love of life, and optimism. The past decade was so challenging for him and his family, may all now rest in peace.

Henry Von Kohorn:

We’re told that it’s hard to make good friends later in life. While mostly true, there are exceptions, and I like to think that my relationship with Lanny Jones is one of them. At Princeton, I knew of Lanny because of his stellar writing for the Prince, but I don’t think that we ever met. Later, at Reunions – major and off-year – which we both regularly attended, we would chat from time to time.

But it wasn’t until Meredith and I moved to Princeton 13 years ago that we got to know Lanny and Sarah well. They welcomed us to the community in an overwhelmingly gracious way, inviting us to their home – often for a book party – introducing us to their friends, and, on one memorable occasion, bringing us along to someone else’s dinner party; the hostess didn’t seem to mind. We saw the Joneses often, and enjoyed each other’s company. We had much in common – our families, our community, our thoughts on events of the day, Princeton University, and, of course, ’66! We will miss Lanny terribly.

Lanny’s contributions to the Class of ’66 will be very hard to replace. As we navigated through the stages of our lives, he conducted surveys of our Class for major reunions and then organized fascinating panels to report on the results. He was the driving force behind the evocative documentary produced for our 50th Reunion, combining archival video with current interviews of classmates, reminiscing about their days at Old Nassau. And he was always willing to involve himself in other Class matters – most recently as a member of the Tiger Talks committee.

Lanny was also an important part of the local community here in Princeton. We were both members of an organization called “The Old Guard of Princeton, New Jersey.” In fact, Lanny sponsored me for membership. This Old Guard – not to be confused with the Old Guard of Reunions fame – gathers once a week during the academic year to hear speakers of note. Lanny was recently recognized by the organization as the undisputed champ finding and introducing speakers to the group – well over one hundred in recent years. This should come as no surprise. Lanny knew everyone.

Late in his life, Lanny struggled with manifold health issues. But, much as with his life-long hearing impairment, he refused to allow these physical ailments to limit or define him. His latest book, Celebrity Nation: How America Evolved into a Culture of Fans and Followers, was published just last year, and he went on a book tour to promote it.

There is much more to say about Lanny, in particular his wonderful family and his professional successes. I’ll leave that to others. Suffice it to say, the conventional wisdom is wrong. In later life, you can make good friends, and I am lucky to have been a friend of Lanny’s.

Sandy Martin:

Lanny, Jim Merritt, Ham Shields, David Stewart, Dave Ames, and I roomed together in Holder 1 sophomore year, and joined a wonderful group of guys junior and senior year in the fifth entry of Blair. In the summer before our senior year, Lanny joined me in working at a southwestern Montana cattle ranch where I had worked previously and which I believe helped ensure a lifelong affection for the area, where Lanny and Sarah had a home for thirty years and where my wife and I were fortunate to be able to see more of them than was possible back east.

Lanny was known to, and loved by, more people than anyone I have known in my lifetime, and this, I believe, was because he was a wonderfully curious and open person who listened carefully and engaged thoughtfully with every person he encountered. Those who were meeting him for the first time, no less than his longtime friends, could not help but be struck by his genuine interest in them, his innate kindness and decency, and his manifest belief in the essential goodness of most human beings. Even when he undertook an extraordinarily serious bone marrow transplant operation five years ago, from which he never fully recovered, his vitality, optimism, and determination to live and to enjoy his family, his friends and anyone who crossed his path never wavered. We cannot but feel blessed to have known him and to wish that more of what Lanny embodied throughout his life cannot be reflected in our society today.

Mike Witte:

"I WANT TO BE WITH YOU ANDI I WANT TO WRITE A BOOK.” Some of Lanny’s final words to his dear family, as quoted by daughter Cassie, telling of her father’s passing in an email this morning.

Perhaps the story of Lanny’s life. Perhaps his epitaph.

“I WANT TO BE WITH YOU.”

Early in his life, Lanny suffered without complaint from severe hearing loss, requiring him to learn to read lips. Learning to read lips demands that one pay close attention to speakers, their facial movements, their words, their meaning.

Lanny paid close attention. He wanted to be with people and he did so with a sympathy and compassion acquired through his own suffering.

And everyone who encountered him sensed his deeply-embedded, selfless empathy: “I WANT TO BE WITH YOU” was reciprocated by “I WANT TO BE WITH LANNY!”

Lanny made friends-many, many friends - lifelong, devoted friends, many of you reading this among them. I count myself privileged to be among them, having known Lanny from seventh grade at St. Louis Country Day School, through Princeton, Greenwich Village, Time magazine, Princeton Alumni Weekly, Money magazine, People magazine, then Princeton, again, where Lanny and Sarah’s lovely, gracious home became a generous Airbnb for so many homeless visitors.

‘I WANT TO WRITE A BOOK”

Lanny encountered serious illnesses later in his life, always without self-pity or complaint. And always surrounded by research for his next book. His most recent, the well-received “Celebrity Nation,” was written while confined in a “bubble” recovering from a near-fatal blood disease. At his death, he had completed a forty-page outline of his next work, an account of the cultural influence of mid-westerners (Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Landon Jones?) who had moved to America’s East.

Lanny could write and edit. Brilliantly. One watched with wonder but no surprise as his career moved seemingly inevitably from school paper to the Daily Prince to TIME cub reporter to author of important books to foundational creator of People magazine to recipient of the TIME Inc. Life Achievement Award.

And in spite of his many achievements’ Lanny was always just “Lanny" - a generous, welcoming, selfless friend who “wanted to be with you.”

I was with Lanny and Sarah on a Jersey beach in 1969. They had invited me for a Sunday Princeton visit, a respite from my waiter’s job in NYC, where I had been striving without success to establish a career as an artist. “By the way, Mike,” Lanny casually offered, “a job just opened in the TIME art department. Would you be interested?”

“Why, yes, I would, my dear, dear friend, Lanny. Dear God, I would.”

Bruce Leslie:

Bruce shared the following letter he sent to the Friends of the Princeton University Library.

Dear Friends of Princeton University Library,

In this year when we’ve suffered so many grievous losses, I am saddened to bring news of another one. Our esteemed Friend Lanny Jones passed away this weekend after a long illness.

Lanny was a Friend and a friend to all of us. For all his successes and professional reputation, he continued to be a loyal Friend. I’m sure we’ll long remember his clever and insightful talk for our 2023 Annual Dinner on the celebrity culture that he had helped to create through People magazine but was questioning in retrospect.

Lanny’s influence lives on with the Friends. It was his introduction that led to us to booking Maureen Corrigan for the 2025 Annual Dinner talk before others realized that it would mark the centenary of the publication of The Great Gatsby. That was so typical of Lanny, and I want to acknowledge the behind-the-scenes assistance he gave me as a new Chair of the Friends.

Like so many, I mourn the loss of someone so talented and warm, but feel gratitude that we benefited from his amazing talents.

When we learn how his life will be celebrated, I will convey the information to you.

Best,

Bruce Leslie, Chair

Dave Lee:

Also very sorry to learn of Lanny's passing. From my career in publishing I know that Lanny was one of Time Inc's top editors, and his People magazine won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1987. Many famous editors never won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence, truly an honor for Lanny and his editorial team. Lanny's newsstand sales also set records as Time Inc's most popular magazine. He moved among the rich and famous, and was a top editor and writer, one of our most gifted class members. Seems hard to believe we have lost him.

Willy Osborn:

So sorry to hear of Lanny’s passing. He was a warm and extremely talented member of the class. He will be missed.

Jeff Shafer:

Lannie and I, together with Mark Levine, were thrown together in a single room in the 7th entry of Pyne Hall freshman year. We got along pretty well despite the close quarters. We had different interests—Lanny had a girlfriend at the time, and I was obsessed with finding ways to get out of our all-male environment and meet girls. But we did talk a lot in evenings about whatever was on our minds. And Lanny introduced me to his St. Louis Country Day School friends. Mike Witte, Tom Tureen and Bill Kelly became friends.

At the beginning of second semester Lanny and I decided to try out for the Daily Princetonian. After a week, I decided it was too much for me. Lanny stuck it out and a great career was born. I did follow his first semester at the Prince closely and subsequently proudly followed his path at Time, People magazine and as a successful author. I have bragged for decades that my former roommate explained to all of us how the baby boom shaped the world.

Lanny invited me to St. Louis after our year together, where a small-town Indiana boy was introduced to the social world of debutante parties. We also attended the NCAA Track and Field Championships. It was pretty informal. We went onto the track for the last event and watched Tommie Smith run straight at us to win the 220-yard dash.

Our paths did not cross often for several decades after graduation. But for the past 25 years, we were both regulars at class events. We always took time to catch up. I recall following with interest as he told me about his work on William Clark. At our Class Day dinner in February, he said he was working on Midwesterners who had moved out as both of us had. I told him that my dissertation adviser, James Tobin, had a sign on the back of his door that read “Great men are born in the Middle West, then they move either East or West”. He emailed me later it was right on the mark for his book. Sad that he won’t finish it.

All of us who new Lanny will miss him. He was a good friend as well as a deep thinker about things that other people don’t see.

Terry Scherck, Lanny's friend since age 12:

I loved Lanny and one of his great gifts, among many others, was that he always made everyone feel his love and warm affection for them. After reading John Heminway’s note, I'm not sure there is much I can add. It is so beautifully crafted, as I’m sure others will be as well.

Terry Seymour:

My most memorable Lanny story, concerning Elizabeth Taylor, I wrote up in some detail in our 50th Reunion Book, page 339. I can’t top that by re-writing so feel free to use it in part or in whole or not at all (see the top of the right column of p. 339). On more than one other occasion I heard Lanny recount his Bel Air interview with Liz in enthusiastic terms. He was such an invariably positive person, always leaping forward from one project to the next. We have lost a friend to many and an inspiration to all.

Dick Everhart:

Just a single fond memory of many of Lanny from early in our Freshman year in Seventh Entry Pyne Hall. Lanny and the many alumni from St. Louis Country Day school were very high on a soon to be famous Princeton Sophomore basketball player from Crystal City, Missouri, near St. Louis. Bill Bradley. I was unfamiliar with even his name. It was in the years when Freshmen could not play on the varsity. I naïvely asked a couple of the St. Louis Country Day guys if they thought this guy Bradley would be good enough to make the Varsity as a sophomore. Lanny’s response was “Dick, he’s going to BE the varsity”! We know how that turned out.

Edward Tenner '65:

Lanny’s passing leaves a deep gap in my life, because he gave me new a new life in Princeton 50 years ago, rescuing me from a series of dead-end jobs to join PUP as a science editor, then giving me a forum in Money magazine at its 1980s peak, and remained a generous adviser of the kind every writer needs but few find.

Ted Bent:

I memorably first met Lanny when we were hapless freshman both fulfilling our foreign language requirements in Andre Maman’s French 107, where Lanny, by his own description and despite his manifold other gifts, distinguished himself with a French accent so bad it made us all cringe and which he himself described as “horrible.” Mike Witte, his classmate from St. Louis Country Day, was in the class too. I had never heard of St. Louis Country Day but, as I became friends with both of them, I was sorry I hadn’t gone there too.

As sophomores Lanny and I both joined Colonial, which we fancied as a somewhat literary/journalists’ club. By then Lanny had left French far behind and was on his way to running the Prince along with some of our other clubmates. Then in our junior year, he and I worked together as co-chairs of the Bicker Committee, a task at which we were both ambivalent and enthusiastic. The section we roped in didn’t suffer from our joint leadership.

Then, happily after graduation we found ourselves congenially nesting with new wives close to each other in Greenwich Village as Lanny began his meteoritic rise at Time Inc., eventually becoming Managing Editor successively of both Money and People magazines. Of course, Mike Witte (and soon his St. Louis-bred wife Sally) also lived just down my street. If I hadn’t gone to St. Louis Country Day, I began to feel as if I might have.

Lanny and I stayed in touch regularly over the ensuing years, mostly with me visiting him and Sarah in Princeton and then less occasionally during his long battle with cancer. But I was fortunate to see them both just a little less than a year ago when my heartstrings suddenly prompted me to visit them again in Princeton. (Of course, on the five-hour drive, I stopped for lunch with Mike Witte.) Seeing Lanny and Sarah that last time was a wonderful gift. Lanny was as exuberant and alive as I had ever known him, still clipping newspapers, and unabashedly grateful for my visit and all his blessings. I will sorely miss him.

Bob Rawson:

Lanny has been an engaged, thoughtful and generous friend to so many of us, in my case since we were Princeton undergraduates. As juniors we joined an invaluable collective of roommates in the 5^th entry of Blair Hall. So began a significant friendship.

All familiar with his work admired Lanny’s multiple talents and achievements in his professional career: writer, editor, social analyst and commentator, and always dedicated Princeton tiger. And so much more.

I especially valued his gift of friendship. He was loyal and supportive, a generous host, good-humored and always positive even in the most challenging of circumstances. He was ever stimulating company.

I will always cherish fond memories of shared experiences with Lanny and Sarah since our undergraduate days. Thank you, Lanny! May you rest in peace.

Jon Wiener:

This is a big one for us – I don’t need to tell you. So glad you guys got Lanny to do a Tiger Talk. So many amazing accomplishments, and such a terrific person. He was generous to me, including me in that video doc he made for our 50th – setting up the Q&A at his house and prepping like the pro he was. I think my favorite thing he wrote was that wonderful NYTimes feature on Nabokov chasing butterflies across the west. – thanks so much ... for including that link in the email.

Ned Groth:

When I was moving cross-country from NY to SF in 2022, I planned a route where I could call on the hospitality of classmates and friends as often as possible, and '66 were there generously for me. After a wonderful visit with Jon and Deborah Dawson in Jackson Hole, I drove north, through Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, heading for the summer refuge Lanny and Sarah Jones owned, in the mountains south of Bozeman, MT. Had a pleasant sojourn with them during what I think was their last summer there (then headed west to land with the Landecks, in Idaho). Lanny's quiet courage, soldiering on with indomitable inner strength, was inspirational. When I visited, he was excited about the upcoming publication of his book, Celebrity Nation. I stayed in their guest cottage in Princeton once, when I came down for the Yale game. Lanny also knew my late wife, Sharon Begley, professionally, and was generous with advice and support when I was setting up a journalism award in her memory. A gracious host, a supportive colleague, a modest and warm friend, I'll miss him a lot.

If you have additional photos or memories that you wish to share, please send them to the '66 Memorial Team (66_MemorialTeam@tiger1966.org). We will add them to this page.