My friend Julian Read, an old school gentleman and friend of many, called me in January. I’m just checking in, he said. Catching up. How are my wife and me?
Well, we said. And Read said he only called to tell us he loved us. And he called because he didn’t know if he could ever tell us that again. It sounded like he was checking in and catching up with a lot of people.
As I said, a gentleman with a lot of friends. And a life that contained connections to a diverse and legendary cast of characters including John F. Kennedy, John Connally, Elvis Presley, Darrell Royal, Siegfried and Roy, and many more.
We visited Read on April 10th, as in the past, at Westminster Manor. By then, he was bedridden and his body was failing. But his mind was sharp and his eyes sparkled as they had when he was telling a story.
And boy did he have stories? People tend to be like this when they have lived interesting, rewarding lives. Reads ended at the age of 93 on Saturday when he died of his family’s causes. The causes he knew brought his life to an end when he called us in January.
He died at Westminster Manor, about a mile from his beloved mid-century modern home, who was 53 years old and lived in West Austin. At Westminster, Read was a self-proclaimed activity director by nature, organizing events and outings.
He couldn’t help it. People that people often can’t.
Julian Otis Read was born near Fort Worth to parents James Otis Read and Tillie Naomi Swaim, early Texan peasant settlers who moved the family to Fort Worth so their children could get the education they never had. He attended Fort Worth Paschal High School, which happened to be with my late mother-in-law, who Read never forgot or was very tall.
In 1945, at the age of 18, Read was working as a young sports journalist and copywriter for the now defunct and legendary Fort Worth Press newspaper. Fifteen dollars a week, but worth a lot more if you put up with sports journalists Blackie Sherrod, Dan Jenkins, and Bud Shrake.
Read Covered Golf for the newspaper and show off his Moxie early on when he called Ben Hogan in his hospital room after the famous golfer’s near fatal car accident in 1949.
Read was freelancing on the side to supplement his less-than-great newspaper income, and once advertised an aspiring singer who at the time was thrilled to get $ 500 for a show. Elvis later ordered higher paychecks.
In 1951, Read left the paper and opened a business in the burgeoning world of public relations in a one-room office apartment. This successful company, compressed here for many years, grew into Read-Poland Associates with offices across the state and DC. Customers were diverse and impressive, including HemisFair ’68, the Official World Exposition of 1968 in San Antonio, DFW Airport, Southwest Airlines, Illusionists Siegfried and Roy, Disney’s World on Ice, and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.
We all have our thoughts on this last one. But for this moment, can we please look at it through the lens of Read’s time? He loved the circus and the joy it gave people, especially the little ones.
The Obit prepared by his family states: “Read had a variety of adventures including being bitten on the leg by one of Siegfried and Roy’s royal white tigers after a televised photo shoot and at gunpoint outside a Denver motel was robbed. “
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Read’s influence in the political world began when he helped Don Kennard win the Texas House election in 1952. In 1954, Read helped a Weatherford mayor a disgruntled victory over a three-year incumbent in the US House of Representatives. That Mayor, Jim Wright, then made a pretty solid DC career, including serving as Majority Leader and House Speaker.
Also read the presidential campaign work for Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, George Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush – a varied list.
Consultants with little chance today or tomorrow could support such a diverse amount.
But it was Read’s ties with John Connally that were perhaps the closest. In late 1961, Connally Read recruited over a cup of coffee at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth. (Yes, the hotel where Kennedy would spend his last night in 1963, before the Dallas assassination attempt that also killed Connally.)
Connally, then a Democrat, won the gubernatorial race in 1962, which not least helped Read produce five-minute television commercials to introduce Connally to the electorate. They were called “Coffee with Connally” and were an early, innovative use of television by political candidates.
On November 22, 1963, when Connally was hosting JFK’s unfortunate visit to Texas, Read served as Governor’s press secretary as Connally’s liaison with the White House Press Corps that traveled with the President.
Reads Obit recalls the day: “Read drove the White House press bus just a few vehicles behind the presidential limousine in the motorcade and saw the assassination take place a few hundred feet away. He then commanded a car and rushed to Parkland Hospital, where he assisted Texas First Lady Nellie Connally. Based on her report on the event, Read presented the first briefing on the events in the presidential limousine to the international media. “
One famous photo shows Read on a blackboard and using the Xs and O’s showing reporters where the occupants of the presidential limo were sitting when the gunfire rang out.
In 2013, Read published “JFK’s Last Hours in Texas,” a book about the young president’s successful stints in San Antonio, Houston and Fort Worth before the horror that took place in Dealey Plaza.
In 1980, Read was communications director for Connally’s unfortunate offer to nominate GOP president. Connally spent $ 12 million (an incredible sum at the time) and got a delegate – Ada Mills of Clarksville, Ark. – at the GOP National Congress. Read always referred to this campaign as his biggest professional disappointment.
I’m not sure Connally would have been a good President, but Read would have been a President’s press secretary. The two men stayed close together until Connally’s death in 1993. And Read stayed close to Nellie Connally until her death in 2006.
Read-Poland merged into a successor company in which Read continued to operate, including as chairman of Burson Cohn & Wolfe Texas in 2001, the 50th anniversary of Read-Poland.
Read also made a mark on college football by turning the University of Texas coach Darrell Royal’s TV show into a national model for that type of show.
Reading and future wife Mary Anice Barber met when he was writing a golf story about her while she was in high school. They married in April 1952. She was known in the preservation of monuments, among other things as the founder of the Texas Main Street Program at the Texas Historical Commission. Read shared her commitment to historical preservation, perhaps because he helped create history. Its archives, a treasure trove for researchers, are in UT’s Briscoe Center for American History.
Mary Anice Barber Read died in 1999 and is buried in Texas State Cemetery. The Reads were married for 47 years. He is survived by daughters Ellen Hardin Read and Courtney Anice Read Hoffman and her husband R. Clark Hoffman and three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Services are organized and announced by Weed Corley Fish Funeral Home.
On that last day we visited with him, Read’s eyes sparkled as he told stories about the history of Texas. But in his fading days to remember what is really important, those eyes sparkled even brighter as they recounted the accomplishments of his offspring.