Larry D. Terry died in Atlanta, Georgia on June 17, 2006, of respiratory arrest due to an allergic reaction. At the time of his death, he was vice-president for business and professor of public administration at the University of Texas, Dallas (UTD). He was 52 years old.
Larry was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Helen and the late Verbie Gene “Flash” Terry. His father was a noted blues musician, of whom Larry was very proud. Larry graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa, earned a bachelor's degree from Lincoln University, a master's degree from the University of Missouri, and a Ph.D. from the Center for Public Administration and Policy (CPAP) at Virginia Tech in 1989.
Larry taught management at Radford College from 1983 until 1991. For the next 10 years he was associated with the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University. In addition to teaching he served as director of graduate programs and interim associate dean/department chair. He taught leadership, complex organizations, policy analysis, and other courses in public administration. He led a successful effort to increase the number of minority students at the college, particularly in the Ph.D. program. He was fond of saying that he believed it was important to provide opportunities, because “all you have to do is open the door a little bit and I'll bust it down the rest of the way myself.” He was an exemplary figure to all graduate students at the college and, I have no hesitation in saying, truly beloved by them.
Larry was elected to the National Academy of Public Administration in 1999. He went to the University of Texas at Dallas in 2001 as associate provost and professor of public administration and within five years became vice-president for business.
In 1999, Larry was appointed editor-in-chief of Public Administration Review (PAR) and served until 2005. In the several months following his appointment, he traveled across the country meeting at universities and with chapters of the American Society for Public Administration to hear their views about PAR. He called this the “Building Bridges Tour,” and it was entirely characteristic of him. Larry was a bridge builder par excellence, who did much to strengthen connections between various factions in the field and renew interest and support for the journal.
Working with Larry on PAR was somewhat like holding onto a jet plane as it soared into the air. He had endless good ideas, including a special issue on the events of September 11 and their implications for public administration, affiliating the journal with Blackwell, and various tactics for streamlining the review process and winning the hearts and minds of a large editorial board. He established the “editor's choice award,” given each year to the one or two board members with the highest productivity (based both on quality and quantity). I was amazed to see them competing with one another on who could turn in the fastest and best reviews. He also set up a “rapid response” system in which board members volunteered for single months of the year in which they would guarantee to return a manuscript in one week. We used this system often when other reviewers lagged in getting their reviews in. He got the average turnaround time down from “too high” to just over one month.
Larry's vision of what PAR could be was completely clear to him almost from the day he took over. His political savvy made him a master at negotiating the various minefields that are the special challenge of a journal editor. He made PAR a great many friends and I believe virtually no lasting enemies. His center of gravity was his sense of the field of public administration and its significance.
Larry was the author of Leadership of Public Bureaucracies: The Administrator as Conservator (two editions). His 1996 article, “Administrative Interpretation of Statutes: A Constitutional View of the New World Order” co-authored with Michael Spicer, won the William and Frederick Mosher Award given annually by PAR for the best article by an academic. He was the author of more than a dozen other academic articles. He organized a PAR symposium in 1998 on new public management that became a landmark. His own contribution, “Administrative Leadership, Neo-managerialism, and the Public Management Movement,” has been widely cited. His essay, “The Thinning of Administrative Institutions,” is included in the recently published volume, Revisiting Waldo's Administrative State. “The President's Committee on Administrative Management: The Untold Story,” co-authored with Stephanie Newbold, is forthcoming in Administration & Society.
Larry was the kind of leader he wrote about: a conservator, one who preserves and protects the core values of the enterprise so that it can develop coherently. He was someone who took tradition seriously and at the same time was never afraid of new ideas. In fact he probably had more good ideas than anyone I've ever known, and was filled with enthusiasm for whatever he was working on, whether it was a paper, a recruitment strategy, or a way to strengthen PAR. At the same time he was adept at keeping his eye on the big picture, and a master of academic politics. After he completed his term as editor, he was looking forward eagerly to having more time to write. He had a lot left to say. The quality of his published work hints at what we have lost because he didn't get a chance to bring the rest of his intellectual plans to fruition. Yet his legacy is rich.
Larry leaves four children: Larry D. Terry II (a doctoral candidate in public administration at UTD), Feliz, Jacob, and Gavin. His family, friends, students, and colleagues miss him more than words can say.
