Bradford, Richard (Roark) 1932-2002
BRADFORD, Richard (Roark) 1932-2002
OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born May 1, 1932, in Chicago, IL; died of lung cancer March 23, 2002, in Santa Fe, NM. Editor, screenwriter, and author. Bradford is remembered primarily as the author of the novel Red Sky at Morning, a coming-ofage story that was compared by some reviewers to J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. A graduate of Tulane University where he received his B.A. in 1952, Bradford spent the 1950s as a staff writer for the New Mexico State Tourist Bureau and then as an editor for the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce. In the early 1960s he continued working as an editor for Zia Co. in Los Alamos, New Mexico before becoming a research analyst in Santa Fe at the New Mexico Department of Development. Bradford completed Red Sky at Morning while working as a screenwriter for Universal Pictures, a job he left in 1970. His first novel was followed in 1973 with the less-critically successful So Far from Heaven. Suffering from writers block, Bradford never penned another novel, instead making his living as a medical transcriber and as a freelance book reviewer and contributor of humorous articles to various periodicals.
OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:
BOOKS
Writers Directory, 16th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.
PERIODICALS
Los Angeles Times, March 29, 2002, p. B12.
New York Times, March 30, 2002, p. A15.
Washington Post, March 28, 2002, p. B7.