HOUSE, R(ichard) C(alvin) 1927-2004 (Beau Jacques)

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born February 22, 1927, in Ashtabula, OH; died of complications from cancer and other illnesses, January 28, 2004, in Encinitas, CA. Journalist, editor, and author. House was an author of Western novels and short stories who also was a longtime editor at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. After serving in the U.S. Army from 1945 to 1947, he attended Bowling Green State University for two years and then graduated from Kent State University with a B.A. in 1951. His first job as a journalist was with the Kent Courier Tribune; in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was an employee communications specialist for the Ford Motor Company in Cleveland, Ohio, and Dear-born, Michigan. In 1962, he left for Arizona, where he worked on weekly newspapers briefly before returning to a career in employee communications, this time with the insurance company Occidental Life in Los Angeles. He left this job in 1969 to work for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where he continued to be an editor until his 1992 retirement. Enamored of the romance of the Old West since the time he was a boy, House began writing short stories about this setting, finding some publishing success by the late 1960s. His first novel, So the Loud Torrent, was released in 1977. The author followed this with eight more Wild West novels, including Vengeance Mountain (1980), Ryerson's Manhunt (1994), Verdict at Medicine Springs (1994), and Stouthearted Men (1995), being much more productive after his retirement. He was also the author of The Offıcial Price Guide to Collectibles of the Early West (1994), and contributed to periodicals, sometimes under the pseudonym Beau Jacques.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chronicle of Higher Education, March 5, 2004, p. A39.

ONLINE

Sign On San Diego,http://signonsandiego.printthis.clickability.com/ (February 6, 2004).