I was born in Bethesda Naval
Hospital (now Walter Reed Military Medical Center) to a Navy lawyer and a
housewife. I grew up shuttling between New York and Washington, D.C., the third
of seven children. I have two older sisters as well as two younger sisters and
two younger brothers, not necessarily in that order.
I graduated from West Springfield
High School in Fairfax County, VA. Two weeks later I was in Navy boot camp at
the Naval Training Center at Great Lakes, Michigan. I became a radioman and
served in Morocco and aboard the USS Waccamaw. When I got separated, I went to
the University of Missouri-Columbia. I declared journalism as my major because
I had to declare something for the GI bill. I found I enjoyed it and spent 41
years first reporting and then editing at small and medium-sized newspapers.
When Amy and I married I discovered
what love, friendship and partnership really meant. She’s also why I’m writing
books. She retired five years before I did and decided to pursue her long-term
goal of writing histories about children who survived the Holocaust. Being an
English and reading teacher, she wanted someone with more writing experience to
work with her. First, she tried to recruit our daughter, Jyssica, who is a writer
and editor in her own right. Jyssica turned her down, despite repeated tries, pointing
out it was not the kind of writing she did and that she had to make a living
and this would be a long-term project.
Then I retired. Jyssica pointed out
to her mother that I not only was a writer of the kind she needed but that both
of us were students of the Holocaust.
So I got drafted. Amy recruited the
10 survivors and we interviewed them and wrote the book, Holocaust’s Child,
which Jyssica edited.
Now, you may ask, why did I use
“W.R.” instead of “William”? I’m glad you asked. It was mostly a matter of
space. William took up too much room so our names would have had to be really
small, something we did not want. And when I started writing novels, I just
kept it.
I am not a genre writer. In
addition to the non-fiction work, I have written a dystopian trilogy, a romance
and three adventure/romances. The common theme which ties them together is an
examination of the human condition: What makes people do what they do?
Amy and Jyssica are now my editors
and sternest critics. Both have made invaluable contributions which made my
books much better.