Laury Minard, 51 Jude Wanniski August 6, 2001

Memo To: Friends, Supply-Siders, Journalists
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: A Sad and Terrible Loss

If you are not already a senior citizen, you’ll find that as you get up in years you will turn to the obituary page sooner than you had in middle-age, always expecting the possibility someone you know or someone you admired has passed away. It is always sad to see the death of a longtime acquaintance posted and it was wrenching to read earlier this year of the death of Rowland Evans, even though I knew he was almost 80 and was being treated for a serious cancer. It was nothing like the shock I felt on Saturday when I saw that Lawrence “Laury” Minard was dead, at 51. The editor of Forbes Global, Laury had been a professional friend for as long as I can remember, an up-and-coming young Forbes reporter in the early days of the Reagan administration who I came to assume would one day be editor of the magazine. Here is what I wrote Saturday to my e-mail list of several dozen supply-side friends. The NYTimes obit editor assures me there will be something in the Times Tuesday or Wednesday.

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A real shocker, friends. "Forbes Editor Minard, Dead." Headline in today's NYPost business section. It is so hard to believe that Laury, an athletic 51, could so quickly be taken from us. A heart attack at 12,500 ft. while he was climbing Mount Rainier with his 16-year-old daughter. He went into distress and died before he could be airlifted down. Of all the business editors in the world, there is no question that Laury was the most hospitable to supply-siders. Nobody close. When the legendary Jim Michaels retired four years ago, I enthusiastically and publicly endorsed Laury to succeed him as Forbes editor. Instead, he was asked to start up Forbes Global four years ago, where he was a steady source of support for our ideas. Some of my other supply-side friends ask me why I am so impatient with them in trying to reach the original goals we set for ourselves 25 years ago. Without Laury, it's that much harder. Our original crew is uniformly over 60. I was 65 on June 17.

Bye, Laury. Watch over us.