Wilcox, Robert K. 1943–

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Wilcox, Robert K. 1943–

(Jake Kalleen, Bob Wilcox, Robert Kalleen Wilcox)

PERSONAL: Born July 21, 1943, in Indianapolis, IN; son of Jacob Guire (a real estate broker) and Agnes (a real estate broker; maiden name, Kalleen) Wilcox; married Begoña de Amezola, June 1, 1970; children: Robert Guire, Amaya Begoña. Education: Attended University of Oklahoma, 1962–64, and Miami-Dade Junior College, 1964; University of Florida, B.S., 1966. Politics: Independent. Religion: Christian. Hobbies and other interests: History, sports.

ADDRESSES: Home—California. Agent—Jim Trupin, JET Literary Associates, Inc., 2570 Camino San Patricio, Santa Fe, NM 87505. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Writer, journalist and historian. Gainesville Sun, Gainesville, FL, part-time reporter, 1964–66; Miami News, Miami, FL, police reporter, 1966–67, general assignments reporter, 1967–69, religion editor, 1970–73; freelance writer, 1973–. Former features editor, Voice; stringer for New York Times, 1973–78. Military service: U.S. Air Force, 1967–72; became first lieutenant.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, Authors League of America, Writer's Guild of America, West, Sigma Delta Chi.

AWARDS, HONORS: Supple Memorial Award, Religion Newswriters Association, 1970; Creative Excellence Award, U.S. Industrial Film Festival, 1981, for The S.S. Norway; Golden Eagle, Council on International Nontheatrical Events, 1981, for The S.S. Norway, and 1982, for Resource Recovery; Gold Medal, Venice International Film Festival, 1983, for "Resource Recovery"; two William Randolph Hearst Awards for editorial writing, Gainesville Sun.

WRITINGS:

Shroud, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1977, reprinted, Disc-Us Books (Sante Fe, NM), 1999.

The Mysterious Deaths at Ann Arbor, Popular Library (New York, NY), 1977.

Fatal Glimpse, Leisure Books (New York, NY), 1981.

Japan's Secret War, Morrow (New York, NY), 1985, published as Japan's Secret War: Japan's Race against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb, introduction by Derek Desolla Price, Marlowe (New York, NY), 1995.

Scream of Eagles: The Creation of Top Gun—and the U.S. Air Victory in Vietnam, J. Wiley (New York, NY), 1990, reprinted with new introduction, Pocket Star Books (New York, NY), 2005.

Wings of Fury: From Vietnam to the Gulf War—The Astonishing True Stories of America's Elite Fighter Pilots, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1996, reprinted, 2005.

Black Aces High: The Story of a Modern Fighter Squadron at War, Thomas Dunne Books (New York, NY), 2002.

First Blue: The Story of World War II Ace Butch Voris and the Creation of the Blue Angels, foreword by James Lovell, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Also author of television scripts, including "ssMummy Talks," for Simon and Simon. Author of scripts for documentary films, including The S.S. Norway, Cinema East; Everglades Harvest, Cinema East; Resource Recovery, Coronado Studios; and Safehouse, Aims Media. Author of industrial sales/training films for Hanna International. Also author under pseudonyms Jake Kalleen and Bob Wilcox. Contributor to Collier's Encyclopedia, and to periodicals, including New York Times, London Times, National Geographic, Miami Herald, Tropic, and Catholic Digest. Senior editor, eStar.com; contributor, Military.com.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A book on the death of General George S. Patton, Jr., for HarperCollins.

SIDELIGHTS: Robert K. Wilcox is a writer whose works include both investigative reporting and history. In 1977 Wilcox published his first book, Shroud, which probes the historical validity of the shroud of Turin that is believed by some to bear the image of Jesus Christ. In conducting his research, Wilcox examined more than two thousand burial cloths and interviewed both historians and scientists. During the course of his investigation, Wilcox came to believe that the shroud derives from Christ's burial. "This cloth wrapped the historical person Jesus," Wilcox stated in an article in Us by Carl Hiaasen. "I think I proved that." In his review in the Los Angeles Times, Robert Kirsch deemed Shroud "a strange and compelling book that is not for the overly fastidious."

Wilcox followed with The Mysterious Deaths at Ann Arbor, an account of various deaths that began occurring at Ann Arbor's Veteran's Administration Hospital in the mid-1970s. The first deaths, which came from lethal injection of a muscle relaxant, occurred in the facility's Intensive Care Unit, but ensuing deaths sometimes occurred in other parts of the hospital. Two nurses were eventually tried for the killings. Robert Kirsch, writing in the Los Angeles Times, described The Mysterious Deaths at Ann Arbor as "a very well written account."

Wilcox has also published various books on military history. In 1985 he produced Japan's Secret War, which recounts Japan's efforts to develop its own nuclear weapons during World War II. George H. Siehl, writing in the Library Journal, called the book "a story of moral and historical significance." More praise came from the Washington Times, where a reviewer noted that "Wilcox writes exceedingly well." A Retired Officer contributor summarized Japan's Secret War as "the first detailed account of Japan's version of the Manhattan Project."

In his next book, Scream of Eagles: The Creation of Top Gun—and the U.S. Air Victory in Vietnam, Wilcox recounts how the United States Navy's Top Gun school was started during the Vietnam War. Writing in Hook, Jan Jacobs called Scream of Eagles an "excellent book" and affirmed that it "gives proper tribute to the men whose great sacrifices paid off in lives saved in the final years of the Vietnam War." Jacobs contended: "In a nutshell, the human story of men at war … is told and told well."

A related volume, Wings of Fury: From Vietnam to the Gulf War, relates the exploits of heroic fighter pilots. "In many cases, the pilots are allowed to speak in their own words," reported a Publishers Weekly contributor, "but with Wilcox ever hovering in the background to moderate their boasts and certify their veracity."

Wilcox writes about a group of fighter pilots and the role they played in the Balkan War in his book Black Aces High: The Story of a Modern Fighter Squadron at War. It recounts how pilots flying aging F-14 Tomcats had to invent new tactics and intelligence gathering methods in order to locate and kill the elusive Serbian Army during the Kosovo War in 1999. Flying off the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Roosevelt, the pilots, led by a few combat-experienced veterans, had to overcome fierce Serbian air defenses and fly at dangerously low altitudes in the Balkan mountains in order to prevail. Wilcox spent time on the ship during the war and much of the book is based on interviews he did with the pilots at that time. David M. Alperstein, writing in the Library Journal, noted that the author "vividly" describes the pilots' exploits and also commented that the book is "tailored to the lay reader as well as the military buff." Booklist contributor Roland Green concluded that it contained "action-packed drama with great appeal."

In First Blue: The Story of WWII Ace Butch Voris and the Creation of the Blue Angels Wilcox focuses on the career of Ray Marlin "Butch" Voris, a World War II ace with eight kills who went on to start and become the first leader of the Blue Angels, the famous preci-sion flying team authorized by Admiral Nimitz in 1946. After surviving a midair collision, Voris had an illustrious career as a squadron and air wing commander and a Pentagon aide. He then went on to help design the F-14 Tomcat and be a spokesman for NASA during its storied moon shots in the late 1960s. Roland Green, writing in Booklist, noted that the author "has produced a solid, readable biography." In a review for the Library Journal, Edwin B. Burgess noted Wilcox's "exciting narrative" in recounting Voris's World War II missions.

Wilcox once told CA: "I enjoy writing about different things and researching interesting subjects. I'm inclined toward serious nonfiction, but basically I am always just looking to tell a good story. I'm a writer because I like the writer's life, it's freedom, it's stimulation. It is a life of the mind, so there are no bounds on it, at least when you're writing. My family benefits because I'm at home a lot. I benefit because I enjoy seeing my family.

"Good writing, in my opinion, is mostly just good ideas stated well. Sometimes you get lucky and it comes out easily."

Wilcox more recently told CA: "I think my interest in writing stems from being a romantic. I always loved sweeping stories about love and war and so I gravitated to history. Put religion in there too. When I was in grade school, very young, I fulfilled a class show-and-tell assignment by saying I was going to be a novelist when I grew up. I basically forgot that until I got to college. Journalism was the only major offered that did not require a language. Languages had always been tough so I chose it. The choice paid off. I discovered I had some talent in writing so I pursued it. By the time I'd graduated, I knew what I wanted to do. Ironically, I now wish I could speak other languages. Several of my books would have benefited greatly. In addition, understanding other languages is a gateway to knowledge.

"I can't put my finger on anyone in particular who influenced my writing but I'm sure there were lots. Tom Wolfe comes to mind because of The Right Stuff. That was a breakthrough military aviation book. The hardnosed rewrite men I worked with early in my newspaper career impressed me with the need to get things right. I also admired their ability to make complex subjects dramatic and clear. I remember reading Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice and being impressed with the truth that seemed to be in his voice. I wanted to write like that. Today—like Eldridge who became a committed Christian—I probably wouldn't agree with half he said. My father was a man I admired greatly and who influences me to this day, but not so much as a writer, more as a person, I'd like to be like him in many ways. You want clarity and drive in your writing and you want it to be interesting. I just work at it until it seems right. Truth, beauty, honesty, clarity—that's what we all strive for.

"Writing is laborious, hard, tiring—until I get it right. Then it's very satisfying. Once in a while, it's easy. But not often. I try to write a little bit every day so the pages pile up—at least I do that when I have a book to write. But in nonfiction, which I do mostly, you have a lot of research, especially if you are writing a book. You've got to really know what you are talking about. It's hard to both write and research but sometimes you just have to do it. Eventually, you become saturated with the information you need and then you know you can concentrate on the writing. But you can't write what you don't know, so research is an integral part of writing. Once I know what I want to say, it's usually much easier.

"The most surprising thing I've learned as a writer is that I could do it. I firmly believe that if you have any talent at all—and you will know if you do—perserverance and desire are probably the most important things you bring to writing. If you really want to do it, you will. It will take hard work, many failures, and persistence. But if you try long enough, you will learn and prevail. Unfortunately reading about writing doesn't teach you much. You must constantly do it. You must have the courage to try even when you think what you are writing is bad. Only through constant writing will you most likely learn and progress. Aside from that, I would say, go to the source when you want to learn something. Do not rely solely on what has been written before or you will repeat those authors' mistakes. You will not grow. Going to the source, always asking questions, will yield surprising answers.

"I have no real favorite of my books. I like every book I've written. But I'd have to say that Shroud and Scream of Eagles come to mind when I think favorite; Shroud because of the subject matter and the wonderful experience I had traveling the globe researching it; Scream of Eagles because it was my first venture into what I really like to write about: men at war. And also because it's a great unknown story about a victory we won in the Vietnam War. It has special drama. I also have a soft spot for First Blue because of the subject, Butch Voris, a man I greatly admire. He was a great pilot and man of strong character. He lived a courageous life because of that character and had adventure that few of us could even imagine let alone do. He was involved in epic history and yet he was as unpretentious and honest as anyone I've ever met.

"I want my books most of all to be entertaining; pleasurable to read. Then I hope they contain truth that the reader will see and can use; something that will help him or her. Finally, I hope the effect will be such that the book sells because if it doesn't, this job of digging into things I like, mastering them, regurgitating them so others see what I see and have the fun I have, will become that much harder."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 15, 2002, Roland Green, review of Black Aces High: The Story of a Modern Fighter Squadron at War, p. 199; October 1, 2004, Roland Green, review of First Blue: The Story of WWII Ace Butch Voris and the Creation of the Blue Angels, p. 288.

Hook, winter, 1990, Jan Jacobs, review of Scream of Eagles, p. 94.

Library Journal, March 1, 1985, George H. Siehl, review of Japan's Secret War, p. 90; November 15, 2002, David M. Alperstein, review of Black Aces High, p. 86; November 1, 2004, Edwin B. Burgess, review of First Blue, p. 98.

Los Angeles Times, October 25, 1977, Robert Kirsch, review of The Mysterious Deaths at Ann Arbor; November 7, 1977, Robert Kirsch, review of Shroud.

Publishers Weekly, April 7, 1997, review of Wings of Fury, p. 83.

Retired Officer, April, 1985, review of Japan's Secret War.

Us, January 24, 1978, Carl Hiaasen, "The Face of Jesus: A Skeptic's Search," p. 29.

Washington Post, March 31, 1985, review of Japan's Secret War.

Washington Post Book World, March 31, 1985.

Washington Times, March 28, 1985, review of Japan's Secret War.