Gardner, Ralph D(avid) 1923–2005
GARDNER, Ralph D(avid) 1923–2005
OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born April 16, 1923, in New York, NY; died of complications from diabetes March 30, 2005, in New York, NY. Journalist, advertising executive, and author. Gardner was best known as a biographer of Horatio Alger. He completed a journalism degree at New York University in 1942 and earned a certificate in military administration the next year from Colorado State College, just before enlisting in the U.S. Army for the duration of World War II. After the war Gardner was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and was involved in founding the newspaper's international edition in Paris. He was also a bureau manager in Germany and Austria. In 1955, he left journalism to found his own advertising company, Ralph D. Gardner Advertising, in New York City. By this time, he had changed his birth surname from Goldburgh to Gardner in 1950. Gardner edited and contributed to several books in his lifetime, but he remained best known for his debut biography, Horatio Alger; or, The American Hero Era (1964; revised in 1971 as Road to Success: The Bibliography of the Works of Horatio Alger), which earned him the Prize for Literature from the Horatio Alger Society. He was also the author of Writers Talk to Ralph D. Gardner (1989).
OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
New York Times, April 17, 2005, p. A31.