Wait, J. Russell

Director of the Port of Houston, Tex.

J. Russell Wait was General Manager of the Port of Houston from 1930 to 1947. He was born in New Jersey in 1882 and graduated from Lehigh University in 1906. Prior to his coming to Houston, Mr. Wait had been director of the Port of Charleston, South Carolina, and had spent a year at the Port of Beaumont. Four years after retiring from the Houston Port Authority, Mr. Wait came out of retirement in 1951 to serve the Brazos River Harbor Navigation District as general manager and re-retired to Kerrville the following year.

While General Manager of the Port of Houston, Mr. Wait was responsible for the dredging of the ship channel from Galveston to the Turning Basin and under his leadership Houston grew from twelfth to the nation's third largest port. During these years, Wait amassed detailed information on the history and activities of the port: its construction, facilities, finances, clients and operations. While with the Brazos River Harbor Navigation District he expanded his collection to include District Annual Reports for the years 1952 through 1958, with supplementing documents and detailed, annotated photographs of the harbor construction, which had taken place from 1952 to 1956.

Although not a Rice alumnus or official faculty member, Wait lectured frequently at Rice and developed a fondness for the university. At the time he announced the gift of his collection to the university he said, "Most of my work was done in Houston, and most of the pictures and many of the books and papers have Houston origins. It seemed to me that this great university should have them."

Excerpted from "Treasures in the Attic" by Alan Harris Bath, featured in Fondren Library's The Flyleaf, Summer 2000.