Perhaps this has already been posted, but I just learned that author Jack D. Hunter passed away several days ago. His novel The Blue Max, and the feature film loosely based on it, did much to promote interest in First World War aviation.
Some more details:
Gone West: ‘The Blue Max’ Author Jack D. Hunter
Thu, 16 Apr ’09, AeroNewsNet
Published Last Novel In October
ANN has learned that author Jack D. Hunter has passed away at age 87.
His World War I novel, “The Blue Max” was published in 1964, became the basis for a motion picture of the same title starring George Peppard two years later, and continues to find an audience today. The story of a lower-class 18-year-old German who sets his sights on shooting down 20 enemy aircraft to earn his nation’s highest decoration held echoes of its author’s own personal conflicts.
Hunter’s website recalls he was stillborn, but refused to stay dead when doctors gave up on him, never was an athlete but lettered as his track team’s manager, was colorblind but became an accomplished aviation artist, and abhorred violence but enlisted in the Army after Pearl Harbor.
Hunter eventually authored 17 published novels. His last was “The Ace,” about American pilots in World War I, published in October (shown at right). He was reported to be working on two more books at the time of his death, and had discovered a love for blogging, which freed him from the constraints of editors and publishers.
Responding to a 1998 invitation to talk about his most famous work, Hunter noted that the literary establishment frowns upon such explanatory efforts, holding that a work should stand on its own. He commented:
“Although I’ve toiled some 55 years in the publishing vineyard, I’m still not sure who or what constitutes the literati. The cynical mind suggests that the term is an invention of the book industry’s pharisees, calculated to intimidate authors who would stray from the Church of the Holy Profit…
“I’ve been almost everywhere and have experienced almost everything the world has to offer by way of kindness and cruelty. And now that my long road is nearing an end, I feel no further need to prove myself, or to submit to anybody else’s idea of how I should live what’s left of my life. In my personal twilight, I do what I wish, providing it’s legal and not too high in calories. So here I am, commenting on The Blue Max because it pleases me to do so — and because I don’t give a rat’s empennage what the “literati” might have to say about it.”
The Florida Times-Union, where Hunter had worked as a writing coach, reports he died Monday in St. Augustine after a battle with cancer, but not before one last blog entry on March 27.
“It’s been a real trip, folks, but I’m hanging up my spurs. I’ve enjoyed writing my blog, as I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it. But, due to my increasing physical weakness, it has become more of a burden than a pleasure, and it’s time, as the old cliche says, to exit stage right.”
The family says the funeral will be private.
By: Flying-A - 22nd April 2009 at 02:24
Glad your found it interesting, Scotavia. Here is some more information from another obit:
Local novelist Jack D. Hunter has died at age 87
He wrote numerous books, best known for “The Blue Max.”* By Charlie Patton
* Story updated at 11:27 AM on Tuesday, Apr. 14, 2009BOB SELF/The Times-Union
Jack D. Hunter, a novelist and artist who was a long-time St. Augustine resident, died Monday morning after a battle with cancer. He was 87.
Mr. Hunter, who was honored as a “Literary Legend” by the Florida Heritage Book Festival last summer, published his first novel, “The Blue Max,” in 1964.
That tale of a German flying ace during World War I was made into a popular movie in 1966 and put the phrase Blue Max into the American lexicon.
“A fast-food joint in Grand Central used to advertise a blue cheeseburger called the Blue Max,” book critic Peter Prescott told the Times-Union in 1986. “I always thought Jack should have a penny for each sold.”
Prescott, who served as Mr. Hunter’s editor at Dutton and later as book critic for Newsweek, called the story of an ambitious but morally flawed pilot “a really good novel.”
Mr. Hunter went on to write 16 more novels, coming full circle in his last, “The Ace,” published this fall. “The Ace” is about American pilots in World War I.
Both novels were inspired by Mr. Hunter’s love of World War I aviation, which he traced to his fascination as a small boy sitting in a darkened movie theater, watching the silent movie epic Wings.
Mr. Hunter learned German because he wanted to read the autobiography of Manfred von Richthofen, the famed German aviator known as the Red Baron.
Mr. Hunter’s own dreams of flying were thwarted by the fact he was color-blind. But his fluency in German led the Army to send him to post-war Germany as a counter-intelligence agent, an experience that became the basis of his second novel, The Expendable Spy.
After his military service, Mr. Hunter went to work in Wilmington, Del., as a newspaper and radio reporter and later as a congressional aide. Eventually he joined DuPont, the Delaware-based industrial conglomerate, in public relations.
He quickly rose through the corporate ranks. But he wasn’t happy, he told the Times-Union in 1986: “I was being groomed. But yet I kept seeing what was ahead and it disturbed me.”
In 1961, the year he turned 40, he picked up a pen and started writing, pouring his frustrations into the internal turmoil of his protagonist, Bruno Stachel. (His e-mail address later was [email]brunostachel@aol.com[/email].)
In 1980, he and his wife, Shirley, whom everybody called Tommy, moved to St. Augustine. While she operated a gift shop named The Blue Max, he wrote novels, served as the writing coach at the Times-Union for more than a decade, and eventually turned his hobby of sketching vintage aircraft into a successful second career. He liked to call himself “Grandma Moses of aviation art.”
Mr. Hunter had put himself through Penn State [Pennsylvania State University, State College, Pennsylvania] before World War II by playing piano in a Dixieland band, despite never having any musical training.
“I’m a self-taught everything,” he told the Times-Union last summer. “I feel like an impostor in every field I’m involved in.”
Tommie Hunter died in November 2006. To help get himself through a “terrible mourning period,” Mr. Hunter turned to old enthusiasms and wrote The Ace. He also started a regular blog on his Web site, www.jackhunter.com.
It was on his blog that his fans tracked the progress of his illness.
The last blog entry, on April 8, was posted by Jonni Anderson, his executive assistant and close friend, who told fans that Mr. Hunter was fading fast.
“Rejoice with me that we had the great good fortune to know him, to sit at his feet and learn, to groan over the awful puns, to grimace or grin at the way he twisted the English language to his own purposes,” she wrote. “He changed an awful lot of lives, and we’ll never know just how many.”
He is survived by four children: Jack Hunter Jr. and Jill Hunter of St. Augustine, Lee Higgins of Middletown, Del., and Lyn Cannon, of Solomons, Md.; three grandchildren; and his brother, Robert L. Hunter of Jacksonville.
Plans for a memorial service in Jacksonville are incomplete. The funeral will be private.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions be made in Mr. Hunter’s name at the Community Hospice of Northeast Florida, 4266 Sunbeam Road, Jacksonville , Fl. 32257.
By: scotavia - 19th April 2009 at 09:46
Thanks Flying A, I will have to sek out his books.The OBIt. contains some choice comments by him, a philosophy which I am following tho I have many more years ahead!
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April 19, 2009 at 4:18 am