Biography
Born in Boston on May 19, 1871, Russell left formal schooling at the age of nine (ten in some accounts) in order to help support his family. At age thirteen he became a church organist. He paid his own way through Massachusetts Normal School of Art. His jobs included: art editor at Collier's Magazine, portrait painter, author and lecturer, architect (Hotel des Artists (rumored involvement), West 67th St., New York; Alwyn Court at 58th and Seventh Avenue; a Gothic studio opposite the Museum of Natural History on 79th St.), sculptor (including busts of Mark Twain, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Thomas Alva Edison, etc.).
In 1894 Russell married his first wife Helen Andrews, with whom he had two daughters.
Russell also studied physics, and in his latter scientific period he advocated the transmission or acquisition of energy from what he referred to as the 'fabric of space'.
His Swannanoa estate was the setting for his University of Science and Philosophy from the late 1940s to the early 1990s. He lived there with his second wife Lao Russell till May 19, 1963 and she continued his work at the University until May 5, 1988. The Russells welcomed visitors to Swannanoa. Today, the place is closed down.
Born Daisy Cook in England, and later known as Daisy Stebbing, Lao Russell (November 1904 – May 5, 1988) emigrated to the United States in the 1930s, where she marketed her own beauty products, such as Beautipon, a breast enhancement cream, and Slimcream, a breast reduction cream. She advertised these in publications such as Popular Songs magazine, buying small classified ads. She was an admirer of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Her relationship with Walter Russell began in 1946, when she read The Man Who Tapped The Secrets Of The Universe and looked him up, eventually leading to Russell's re-marriage "...and who shall deny that her simple philosophy tapped the secret of the universe." Students at the University are not restricted to a study of Walter Russell scientific theories but they can also seek enlightenment in the works of Lao Russell on such topics among others as love, sex and reincarnation.
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“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
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