Plum 98: Glenn Janss

The path of a legend is rarely linear. Heroes seldom set out to do what they are, ultimately, best known for. Resilience is a remarkable life skill. And you need to know when to leave the stage.

These are the lessons learned in a conversation with Glenn Cooper Janss, community leader and founding director of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, who recently moved to Tetonia, Idaho for some well-earned solitude and rest.

Glenn, who left her mark not only on the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, but also on the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation and the new Wood River YMCA, moved to Sun Valley in 1968. A widow with five children, (her husband William Cooper died of cancer at age 40), she says she needed a change and was tired of being a “human taxi,” driving her kids all over Los Angeles.

“I wanted to be in a quiet place where I could have a family circle and it (Ketchum) was just great. Instead of dropping off the kids to horseback ride or ice skate, we did it all together. And you could bike everywhere. I thought, this is the way life is supposed to be.”

But her children, ages 8 through 15, missed their friends and schools and activities, and found it difficult to adjust to small town life. Fortunately, the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation had just been formed and the fourth Cooper child, Christin, got involved. As the team grew and developed, it became one of the best teams of women that has ever been and they headed to the 1984 Olympics. “Christin found her thing and it was great,” says Glenn. She did, however, end up sending the kids away for school because, she says, “they just weren’t learning academics here.”

Glenn had also left a lot behind in California. She had worked at the Los Angeles Country Museum of History and as the new museum on Wilshire was being built, she was asked to train 200 new docents, work for which she took home the LA Times Women of the Year Award for art in 1965. This interest in art caught the attention of longtime friend and former Sun Valley Resort owner, Bill Janss. An art lover himself, Bill asked Glenn to start an art center. “He believed in creating the total human being, which included needing the culture, the artist, the spiritual and the physical,” Glenn explains. At first, Glenn told Bill “No.” But when she broke her hip skiing on Baldy that first winter she called Bill and said, “I’ll take your job.” Thus, Sun Valley Center for the Arts was born and developed into an attraction for world-class artists and young art students many of whom became fabulous professionals, too.

When Anne Janss, Bill’s wife, died tragically in an avalanche near Trail Creek one powder day in January of 1973, Glenn happened to be right behind her friend on the slopes. In the wake of the tragedy, Bill and Glenn’s friendship blossomed. They became one another’s support. “After Bill’s children left, I went to his side because I knew him and knew him well and I never left his side. We had so much in common -- art and food and wine and travel -- and we got married in June. They all had a fit – ‘You should never marry within two years…’ -- but the 1970s were great.”

During their 23 years of marriage, Bill and Glenn Janss stood at the center of all things Sun Valley. They watched the town and the resort build up during the 1970s and they watched it transform when Earl Holding took the reins. Now, Glenn feels she has done her part for SVSEF, for SVCA as well as the new Bill Janss Aquatic Center at the Wood River YMCA. And in November 2007, she moved away.

Glenn explains that she needed a real change in her life, some solitude and rest. “If you don’t make a break, it is hard to say no, especially when things are expected of you and when you are right there.” To Glenn, Tetonia is a lot like Ketchum was when she first moved here. “It’s a new community with new challenges. There is no real market and no real roads.” Glenn spends most her days sitting in her office looking out at the gorgeous rolling hills with patches of trees on one side and the Grand Tetons on the other, and just being. “It gives me a quiet retreat feeling that I have been looking for. If I really want to read a book then I can just read a book.”