Journal Columnist Jeffrey Zaslow Dies at 53

By STEPHEN MILLER and DOUGLAS BELKIN

Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Zaslow was tragically killed in an automobile accident on Friday. Kelsey Hubbard spoke to Deputy Managing Editor Mike Miller about the beloved journalist, whose work touched and inspired millions of people around the world.

Jeffrey Zaslow, a longtime Wall Street Journal writer and best-selling author with a rare gift for writing about love, loss, and other life passages with humor and empathy, died at age 53 on Friday of injuries suffered in a car crash in northern Michigan.


He died after losing control of his car while driving on a snowy road and colliding with a truck, according to his wife and the Antrim County Sheriff's Office. The condition of the truck driver wasn't available.

McLean & Eakin Booksellers

Jeffrey Zaslow giving his last lecture Thursday night in Michigan.

In addition to writing hundreds of memorable Journal articles and columns, Mr. Zaslow did a long stint as an advice columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, succeeding Ann Landers—a job he won after he entered a competition for the position as an angle for a Journal front-page feature.
At the Journal his subjects ranged from the anguish of losing a car in the Disney World parking lot, to the power of fathers' lunchbox letters to their daughters, to the distinctive pain of watching a beloved childhood stadium go under the wrecking ball.

Highlights From 'Moving On'

Some memorable installments of Jeffrey Zaslow's column, and other articles he wrote

• Saying Goodbye to Childhood Haunts 3/25/2004
• Choosing a Soundtrack to 'You', the Movie 1/14/2006
• A Beloved Professor Delivers the Lecture of a Lifetime 9/20/2007
• A Final Farewell 5/3/2008
• What We Can Learn From Sully's Journey 10/14/2009
• How Hope Travels With a Wig 11/3/2010
• Walking Away From a Fantasy 2/2/2011
• Erasing Signatures From History 3/2/2011
• Amid Fear and Pain, Lessons in Love 11/16/2011
• One 'Magic Room' That Links Generations of Brides 1/11/2012

Auditioning for Ann Landers's Job

Dear Jeffrey: Take Our Advice, Stick to Reporting 3/25/1987

More recently, he became one of America's best-selling nonfiction writers, known internationally for such books as "The Girls from Ames," the story of a 40-year friendship among 10 women, and "The Last Lecture," about Randy Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon University computer-science professor who in 2007 was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given only a few months to live.
After Mr. Pausch gave an inspirational multimedia presentation about his life's lessons, Mr. Zaslow—a 1980 Carnegie Mellon graduate—wrote a Journal column about the lecture and posted it on the Journal's website with a video that became an online sensation. The resulting book spent more than a year on best-seller lists and was translated into dozens of languages.
He was twice named best columnist by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and in 2000 he received its Will Rogers Humanitarian Award.
In a statement Friday to the staff of the Journal, editor Robert Thomson said: "Jeff's writing, for the Journal and in his books, has been a source of inspiration for many people around the world and his journalistic life has been a source of inspiration for all journalists."
In 2011, he collaborated with Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, on their memoir, "Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope," following the congresswoman's shooting. He is also the author of "Highest Duty," about the airline captain Chesley Sullenberger, who safely landed a damaged jetliner in the Hudson River in New York.
"Over the last year we got to know and appreciate the talented and caring professional that Jeff was. He was one of a kind and we feel very fortunate for the time we had with him," Mr. Kelly wrote in an email to the Journal Friday. "He touched so many lives in such a positive way. Gabby and I express our deepest condolences to his wife Sherry Margolis and their three daughters - Jordan, Alex and Eden. We will miss Jeff very much."
His latest, "The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for our Daughters," is set in a Fowler, Mich., bridal store where he looked at American weddings. "I found a place with an awful lot of emotion. And I have been writing books with emotion for all these years so I was just grateful to find this place," he told an interviewer.
A native of the Philadelphia suburb of Broomall, Mr. Zaslow majored in creative writing in college.

The Giffords book

In a 2006 feature, Mr. Zaslow wrote about how the rise of iPods meant that everyone could walk around with a personal soundtrack, so he set about creating one for a day in his own life—including a "scene" with his wife, Sherry Margolis. "Aware of my soundtrack project in recent weeks, Sherry wondered what music I'd pick as a tribute to her," he wrote. "No, I didn't choose 'Wind Beneath My Wings' or the 'Jaws' theme. I finally selected Orleans's bouncy 1976 hit, 'Still the One.' Because she is."
In addition to being an accomplished stylist, Mr. Zaslow reported his stories in exemplary depth. For "The Last Lecture" he spent weeks talking to Mr. Pausch.
"Randy would spend an hour each morning on a stationary bike to try to keep himself fit, and in that hour he'd be on the phone with Jeff," said Robert Miller, who was president of Walt Disney Co.'s Hyperion book-publishing unit when the title was published in 2008. "They never missed a day." But, added Mr. Miller, "He was mindful of Randy's time, because Randy didn't have much left."
Mr. Pausch's sister, Tamara Pausch Mason, said Mr. Zaslow learned so much about her brother and his childhood that he became a "vicarious member of the family" who knew all the family's stories and stayed in close contact with them after Mr. Pausch died.
During the period in his career when he wrote the advice column, Mr. Zaslow received many letters from people who were lonely—which became the inspiration for the Zazz Bash, an annual party at Chicago's Navy Pier. Thousands would attend. Hot dogs and chips were piled up on tables for singles looking for love. "He got these letters from lonely people and, being Jeff, he thought he should do something. So he orchestrated this enormous party for them," said Neil Steinberg, a longtime friend of Mr. Zaslow's and a columnist at the Sun-Times.
Mr. Zaslow is survived by his wife, who is an anchor at a Fox television station in Detroit; three daughters, Jordan, Alex and Eden; and his parents, Harry and Naomi Zaslow. Mr. Zaslow adorned his cubicle in the Journal's Detroit bureau with dozens of photos of his wife and girls.
Journal colleagues recalled that while working on columns and books, Mr. Zaslow would collect voluminous notes that he organized in piles that spilled off his desk, sat in uneven rows around his chair and cluttered an empty cubicle adjacent to his. When he took his work home at night, he packed his notes into a wheeled carry-on suitcase.
Arrangements for Mr. Zaslow will be handled by Ira Kaufman Chapel in Southfield, Mich. No details were yet available.