MikeC
21st April 2009, 10:54
~I enthusiastically read several of his novels when I was a boy, and I am sure he is slightly responsible (culpable/liable :biggrin:) for my interest in history.
JACK HUNTER, Author of "The Blue Max" and Other Novels and Accomplished Aviation Artist
Jack D. Hunter, 87, a former reporter, congressional aide and public relations man whose World War I aviation novel "The Blue Max" was made into a film, died April 13 in St. Augustine, Fla., of cancer.
"The Blue Max," published in 1964, was his first novel. It was about a German infantry corporal who joins the air corps. He sets out to shoot down 20 enemy planes and win its highest honor, nicknamed "the Blue Max." The book was made into a 1966 movie starring George Peppard, James Mason and Ursula Andress.
The New York Times review of "The Blue Max" from March 1964 called the work a "briskly interesting first novel."
"Jack D. Hunter, who served as an American agent behind the German lines in World War II, writes with impressive authority about Germans and with absolutely astounding authority about the combat airplanes of World War I," the review stated. "His story moves fast and includes much tersely eloquent conversation."
Mr. Hunter wrote 16 more novels and coached writers at the Florida Times-Union and St. Augustine Record newspapers. His final novel, "The Ace," about American pilots in World War I, was published last fall.
His own dreams of flying were thwarted because he was colorblind. But his fluency in German led the Army to send him to postwar Germany as a counterintelligence agent, an experience that became the basis of his second novel, "The Expendable Spy" (1965).
Jack Dayton Hunter was born June 4, 1921, in Hamilton, Ohio. After military service, Mr. Hunter went to work in Wilmington, Del., as a newspaper and radio reporter and later as a congressional aide. By the early 1950s, he began a more than 20-year career in public relations for DuPont, the Delaware-based industrial conglomerate.
In 1980, he and his wife, the former Shirley Thompson, moved to St. Augustine. While she operated a gift shop named The Blue Max, he wrote novels and turned his hobby of sketching vintage aircraft into a successful second career. He liked to call himself the "Grandma Moses of aviation art."
JACK HUNTER, Author of "The Blue Max" and Other Novels and Accomplished Aviation Artist
Jack D. Hunter, 87, a former reporter, congressional aide and public relations man whose World War I aviation novel "The Blue Max" was made into a film, died April 13 in St. Augustine, Fla., of cancer.
"The Blue Max," published in 1964, was his first novel. It was about a German infantry corporal who joins the air corps. He sets out to shoot down 20 enemy planes and win its highest honor, nicknamed "the Blue Max." The book was made into a 1966 movie starring George Peppard, James Mason and Ursula Andress.
The New York Times review of "The Blue Max" from March 1964 called the work a "briskly interesting first novel."
"Jack D. Hunter, who served as an American agent behind the German lines in World War II, writes with impressive authority about Germans and with absolutely astounding authority about the combat airplanes of World War I," the review stated. "His story moves fast and includes much tersely eloquent conversation."
Mr. Hunter wrote 16 more novels and coached writers at the Florida Times-Union and St. Augustine Record newspapers. His final novel, "The Ace," about American pilots in World War I, was published last fall.
His own dreams of flying were thwarted because he was colorblind. But his fluency in German led the Army to send him to postwar Germany as a counterintelligence agent, an experience that became the basis of his second novel, "The Expendable Spy" (1965).
Jack Dayton Hunter was born June 4, 1921, in Hamilton, Ohio. After military service, Mr. Hunter went to work in Wilmington, Del., as a newspaper and radio reporter and later as a congressional aide. By the early 1950s, he began a more than 20-year career in public relations for DuPont, the Delaware-based industrial conglomerate.
In 1980, he and his wife, the former Shirley Thompson, moved to St. Augustine. While she operated a gift shop named The Blue Max, he wrote novels and turned his hobby of sketching vintage aircraft into a successful second career. He liked to call himself the "Grandma Moses of aviation art."