Park Recreation Center on a year-round basis. Later, she was successful in moving an ordinance to "ease the path" for "small, nonprofit centers where working mothers can leave their children in safe hands while the parents work at self-supporting jobs." Some City Council members questioned her "recent stands favoring oil drilling in the Pacific Palisades, opposing limits on high-rise buildings in Westwood, weakening a smoking ordinance and tampering with rent control." At the same time, she was credited with "holding together a bitterly divided council long enough . . . to resolve a highly sensitive lawsuit accusing the Los Angeles Police Department of illegal spying on civilians." She noted that she was active in adopting rules that outlawed apartment buildings that prohibited children. Personal life Russell married William Treloar Russell, who served in the US Army during World War II, on December 29, 1946. He remained in the Army as a lieutenant colonel for eight years and later became an aerospace engineer with TRW. Together, they had three children: Steven, David, and Mercedes. The family relocated to Westchester, Los Angeles, in 1953. By January 1985, the couple had separated, but they kept in touch with each other, taking outdoor trips and "having dinner with him virtually every night during the Christmas holidays." A Los Angeles Times reporter noted that during the early part of her career as a councilwoman, she "showed off more in public, when she wore muumuus to work along with earrings shaped like watermelons, when she quoted Chinese philosophers, made no secret of the personal flotation tank she owned, and once missed a council meeting to attend a wilderness retreat sponsored by est," which she later said gave her a sense of "empowerment." After her election to the City Council presidency, however, she presented "a tailored, stylish appearance and a politely distant manner that has been described as both presidential and imperious." It was said that she had her goal set on the mayoralty. Russell led a healthy, outdoor life, running several miles a day in 1985 and engaging in strenuous mountain hikes. At age 67 in 1991 she ran twenty-five miles a week and was in the Salton Sea area with her husband, from whom she still lived apart, for a 16-mile, 6,500-foot climb. Russell died at her home on February 11, 2021. She was 97 and had cancer before her death. Quotations "I think of