Dr. Janice "Jan" Mary Riordan (Brick), 83, of Southlake, Texas, died Sept. 17, 2018. Riordan was a longtime professor in the School of Nursing.
Riordan was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and earned her first nursing degree from Evangelical Deaconess Hospital in Milwaukee.
Shortly after graduating from Deaconess, she married a young psychiatrist, Hugh D. Riordan, who was on his way to an internship at St. Francis Hospital in Wichita, Kansas.
Riordan and her husband reared six children in Wichita and she also found time to play an active role in the Kansas League of Women Voters, and trained to get her pilot’s license. She was a member of the 99s, the international organization of women pilots, having performed her first solo flight in a six-seater Cessna while pregnant with twins.
Riordan was a pioneering proponent of breastfeeding when the prevailing culture favored bottle feeding for infants, and was a founding member of the Kansas Chapter of La Leche League International.
She earned a B.S.N. from Kansas Newman then a master’s in nursing from Wichita State University. She would continue on to earn her doctorate from Oklahoma State University.
As her children grew, and her husband was building what is now the Riordan Clinic, Riordan’s professional career flourished. She taught college courses at St. Mary of the Plains and was a nurse researcher at St. Joseph Medical Center. Ultimately, she became a tenured professor in nursing at Wichita State University, where she served on the faculty for 23 years before retiring in 2010. She was Professor Emerita of the School of Nursing at the time of her death.
Riordan was the founding editor and co-author of five editions of Breastfeeding and Human Lactation, the leading textbook on human lactation which is often referred to as “the bible of breastfeeding.” In addition to authoring five other books, Riordan was one of the founders of the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing.
She was a sought-after speaker and spoke dozens of times internationally. From her base at WSU, Riordan was also a pioneer in online learning. Beginning in the early days of the Internet, she was one of the first professors in any field to offer accredited online university courses, which benefitted thousands of students around the world, many of whom would not otherwise have had access to such learning opportunities.
A professorship was endowed at WSU in 2007 to honor Riordan’s contributions to nursing education. The Janice M. Riordan Distinguished Professorship in Maternal Child Health, with its focus on breastfeeding education and research, was hailed by the university as the first of its kind in a school of nursing.
Riordan is survived by six children, two daughters-in-law and one son-in-law: Michael of Paris, France; Neil of Westlake, Texas, and Panama City, Panama; Shirley of Grapevine, Texas; Teresa of Princeton, New Jersey; Renee and Donald Olmstead of Colorado Springs, Colorado; Quinn and Rika of Tokyo, Japan, and Honolulu; and Brian of Rome, Italy, and Honolulu. Riordan is also survived by three nieces, two nephews and 12 grandchildren.
A musical memorial service in Riordan’s honor will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 3, at University Congregational Church in Wichita. Donations in her memory can be made to La Leche League International at https://www.llli.org/support-us/.
Photos courtesy of the Riordan family.