After blazing a trail for women and pioneering science-based service journalism, the popular author of The Times’s Personal Health column is saying goodbye.
A few years back, I organized a sold-out event for The Times. The planners marveled at my success, but I knew the real reason so many people wanted to attend. I had invited a secret weapon.
Her name was Jane Brody.
Since my earliest days as a health journalist, I’ve witnessed the power of Jane, a 4-foot-8 dynamo who has blazed a trail for women since she began her journalism career 59 years ago at The Minneapolis Tribune. She also pioneered a revolutionary new form of service journalism at The Times that forever changed how we talk about our health and well-being.
This week, after 57 remarkable years at The Times, Jane Brody published her last Personal Health column.
Jane was among the first journalists to recognize that better health doesn’t happen in the doctor’s office — it’s rooted in the small decisions we make every day, like the foods we eat, the amount we sleep and whether we wear a bicycle helmet. In fact, when Jane first interviewed at The Times in 1965, she told the managing editor, Clifton Daniel, that she thought the paper’s science coverage fell short of serving its readers. “It doesn’t go far enough,” she told him. “It doesn’t help people live better lives.”
While Jane got the job as a science writer, it wasn’t until 1976 that she was able to fully realize her vision for science-based personal health journalism. Arthur Gelb, the assistant managing editor at the time, asked Jane to produce four writing samples for a proposed weekly column on health. Jane wanted to be sure she’d have the freedom to explore any topic, so for the tryout, she included a column on impotence. Her column, named Personal Health, was approved and became a runaway hit.
Jane continued to push boundaries and force her cautious editors to publish stories about topics previously deemed too embarrassing for Times readers. While writing about the risks of cervical cancer, Jane became the first writer to get the words “sexual intercourse” on The Times’s front page. She insisted on using the word “penis” when the paper previously had used the phrase “male sexual organ.” A former editor killed a column she wrote about masturbation, but Jane published a version four years later, after he retired. Jane recalls that her colleagues at the time called her the “sex editor of The New York Times.”
The Personal Health column prompted an outpouring of support from both readers and physicians. Jane recalls being shocked when she saw copies of her articles posted in her doctor’s office. In 1986, Time magazine named her “The High Priestess of Health” and gleefully recounted how she had chased down a 6-foot teenager who had snatched her watch. “The kid must not have been following her exercise regimen,” the writers joked.
Over the years, Jane has helped to broaden the definition of what personal health means, writing about the healing power of poetry, the importance of being a mentor and how to nurture kindness in a new generation.
But my favorite columns, by far, were those that featured Jane herself, embracing her aging body, sharing her struggles and enjoying all that life has to offer. In 2005, Jane famously chronicled her double knee-replacement surgery, bringing honesty to the challenges and pain of rehabilitation after the procedure. Some people feared the column would discourage others from seeking treatment, but Jane always believed that more information was better, even if it was not always what others wanted to hear. Happily, she wrote a sequel: “3 Years Later, Knees Made for Dancing.” Jane’s new knees have hiked in Costa Rica, Tasmania, Peru and Australia, and bicycled through Vietnam, South Africa, Chile, Poland and Portugal.
I first met Jane in 2007 during a Science Times meeting as she sat at a conference table with her fellow reporters, knitting up a storm. (Jane’s knitting through meetings is part of her legend at the paper.) She would stop on occasion to give her two cents about a health story idea. Years later, when Jane moved to the Well desk, I convinced her to write about her passion for knitting. The column was a blockbuster.
Jane has always been ahead of her time. Long before the Great Resignation, Jane wrote about the opportunity to reinvent yourself, sharing her own goals to travel, learn Spanish and attend more concerts and lectures. In her 70s, she took her four grandsons on an Alaskan nature cruise and a tented safari in Tanzania, which she also wrote about. She adopted a Havanese puppy, Max, and shared the story of how she turned him into a therapy dog. She’s still looking for a teacher to help her learn to play the bandoneon, an accordionlike instrument popular in Argentina.
I think Jane’s greatest strength, however, has been to serve as a comforting voice during times of uncertainty. She tackled a taboo topic in her book “Jane Brody’s Guide to the Great Beyond,” a primer for helping families prepare for the end of life. Just a year later, Jane put its precepts into practice when her husband, Richard Engquist, was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. She always thought of her readers, sharing her personal story of living with her husband’s fatal diagnosis; then, after he died, she wrote about her anguish in “The Pain of Losing a Spouse Is Singular.”
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Jane wrote about how she coped during life in lockdown. Jane crafted one of the most popular columns of her career at the age of 80, when she shared thoughts on how to age gracefully. I was delighted she agreed to host a lively conversation with Dr. Anthony S. Fauci about living well into your 80s and beyond. To mark her 80th birthday, she shared this advice:
Strive to do what you love for as long as you can do it. If the vicissitudes of life or infirmities of age preclude a preferred activity, modify it or substitute another. I can no longer safely skate, ski or play tennis, but I can still bike, hike and swim. I consider daily physical activity to be as important as eating and sleeping. I accept no excuses.
While Jane accepts no excuses for herself, she’s quite compassionate about the health struggles of others, including my own challenges with losing weight. “People come in all shapes and sizes,” Jane told me. “We’re not all meant to look like fashion models or ballet dancers, nor should we want to.”
That said, being in Jane’s presence does tend to bring out the best in people. I remember waiting for an elevator with some guests at a Times event a few years ago, when suddenly we heard Jane’s voice booming from down the hall.
“Jane’s coming!” someone said. It was immediately clear that none of us wanted Jane to see us taking the elevator, so we all sprinted toward the stairwell just as she power-walked around the corner. Jane, of course, headed straight for the stairs, and we all dutifully followed her.
And that is the power and joy of Jane Brody. For more than five decades, Jane’s wisdom, wit and writing have lifted us up, motivated us to try harder and nudged us to be just a little better than we were before.
If you have thoughts you want to share with Jane, please post them in the comments section.
