Jill 'J.R.' Labbe: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram's first female editorial writer Page: 1 of 4

                                
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Jill 'J.R.' Labbe /
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram's first female editorial writer
The flip of a coin determined her future. Heads? Move to Kansas City. Tails?
Fort Worth, Texas.
And with that, Jill "J.R." Labbe packed up the suitcase she'd been living and
working out of for several years and moved to Fort Worth, where her mother and
stepfather lived in 1980. After years of leading public relations efforts for the Ringling
Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus across the country, she was ready to anchor herself to
a sense of community. She did, as a hotel sales and marketing expert in Dallas-Fort
Worth for eight years. "I was just miserable," she says, with her signature candor. "I just,
I felt I had no purpose in life and if I had to arrange another 19-year-old's wedding
reception, I was going to kill myself."