Julia Lamb

Julia (Julie) Anne Lamb of the Upper West Side in Manhattan passed away early on December 27, 2025. She was born on January 7, 1940, to John P. Lamb, a banker, and Marjorie Lamb, an educator, the middle child of seven from Michigan City, a then 500-person town in North Dakota. From an early age, Julie was known for her wit, sociability, humility, and daring. On a chilly night during her senior year in high school, she and two female friends scaled Michigan City’s water tower to emblazon it with their high school class year - an annual feat usually attempted by their male peers.

Julie left North Dakota to attend Vassar College and spent the rest of her life living on the east coast. While at Vassar, Julie majored in medieval history, and through the years continued her passion of historical reading and visiting beloved ancient sites. Soon after graduating from Vassar, she took a year-long trip around Europe and Egypt to visit many of these sites for the first time.

Upon returning to the US from her trip, Julie responded to a job posting in the first newspaper she read when she stepped off the boat. That job was as a ‘copy girl’ at Sports Illustrated (SI). After six months, she was promoted to the clip desk of the sports library, learning the magazine trade from her research and honing her natural writing talent. She was then promoted to reporter at Sports Illustrated and for a number of years covered all of the boating events, including the America's Cup. She continued her career advancement on the editorial side at SI, finally achieving the position of Assistant Managing Editor (AME), at the time the highest position a woman had achieved at the magazine. “She was a model for professional women in the post-60s era,” noted Peter Carry, Executive Editor of Sports Illustrated, who had worked with Julie starting in 1963. “She was a pioneer.”

During her tenure at SI, Julie covered subjects from the Olympics to the swimsuit issue, and as AME top-edited all copy that came across her desk. Her wit shined both in print and person. Mark Mulvoy, the Managing Editor of Sports Illustrated, who promoted her to AME, related the story of when each member of the SI editorial team received a Winter Olympics parka in 1988. Julie wore it around New York and to the office on winter weekends. “I tell people I won a Bronze in the Slalom,” she joked.

A true adventurer, Julie traveled extensively around the world with her friends and siblings as well as through her work at Sports Illustrated. As a licensed pilot, in 1966, Julie, her brother John, and Paula Phelps, a friend from SI, took a cross-country trek. They flew a small Mooney plane from the east coast out to Alaska, then down the west coast of the US before flying back across the US along the southern route, making stops at places such as the Grand Canyon along the way. During the 1970s, she roamed the Middle East with her sister Angela and visited Australia on assignment for SI. She attended Olympics across the globe in the 1980s and often brought back memorable trinkets for her nieces and nephews.

Julie’s more than three decades at Sports Illustrated, as well as her globe-trotting adventures, came to a halt with the progression of multiple sclerosis, which left her paralyzed from the waist down. Despite her paralysis, Julie lived a rich and full life for more than three decades with MS. For many of those years, she split her time between her apartment in Manhattan and her Victorian house on the ocean’s edge in Wells Beach, Maine, which she owned with her dear friend and fellow Sports Illustrated colleague, Demetra Stathoplos, who passed away in 2015. The home in Maine was a gathering place for her siblings, celebrating time together next to the peace of the waves, which they had not experienced in their youth in North Dakota.

As her MS progressed, Julie spent her final few years primarily in New York City, attending plays and other cultural events, visiting museums, and enjoying meals at her favorite local restaurants. Although 2025 was a year of many health challenges for Julie, her last few weeks in December saw her enjoying a choral concert, visiting the Met, and eating with friends and family at her favorite restaurants.

Julie was preceded in death by her sisters Margaret (Mimi) Lamb, Rosemary Leute, and Angela Margolis. Julie is survived by her brothers, John and Mike, their wives Penny and Betty, her sister Kathleen and her husband Herb, her brother-in-law Richard Leute, six nieces and five nephews, her cousin (by marriage) Sachi Lamb, her longtime aides and friends, Shanghel Meighan and Phillippa Bowden, and her loyal one-eyed cat, Oscar. Among the many, many things we will miss are her cheerful “Helloooo!” in greeting when we would visit her, the constant entertaining conversations on topics of both the present and the past, her sharp mind, her amiability, and the generosity of her spirit.