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Richard K. O'Malley (1911-1999) American journalist and author.

Personal

Richard Kilroy O’Malley was born on February 17, 1911, in Portland, Oregon. He later moved with his family to Bellingham, Washington, and then to Butte, Montana when he was eight. Both his parents were journalists. His father, Malcolm George O’Malley, worked for the Montana Standard newspaper in Butte until his retirement in 1947. His mother, Cora O’Malley, wrote a column for the Standard called “South Side Notes”. Richard married Victoria Cooney in 1935 (divorced 1947) and Jeanne Bright, also a journalist, in 1950. He had two children by his first wife: Sidney O'Malley Armstrong and Burke O'Malley Kintli. After his retirement from the Associated Press in 1973, Dick and his second wife Jeanne spent 15 years living on Lough Corrib in Ireland. They returned to America in 1988 and settled in Sun City, Arizona. Dick died there on November 9, 1999.

Career

Journalism was in Dick’s blood. He entered the University of Montana in Missoula in 1930, but as the Great Depression worsened, he left school to roam the country as a hobo, covering thousands of miles in his travels. In 1933, he returned to Missoula to resume his studies, and landed a job at the Missoulian his senior year, where he worked until 1939. He later worked at the both the Helena Independent Record (1939-40) and the Great Falls Tribune (1940-42), before being hired by the Associated Press in 1942.

In 1944, Dick became a war correspondent in the Southwest Pacific. He was present at the Japanese surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, and received an official commendation from the U.S. Department of the Navy in 1946 for war correspondence. After the war, his work for the Associated Press took him to New York, London, Berlin, Moscow, and Cyprus. He was involoved in coverage of the Soviet blockade of Berlin, and had a cameo role playing himself in a 1950 movie about the Berlin Airlift, [[The Big Lift]]. In 1959, he was appointed Chief of Bureau in Paris, a position he held until 1966. During his Paris years, he made frequent trips to Algeria to cover the native revolt against French rule. It was also during his years in Paris that he wrote his novel Mile High Mile Deep.

Works

First published in 1971, Mile High Mile Deep is based on Dick’s boyhood memories of Butte, Montana in the 1920’s and his experiences working in the underground copper mines during his high school vacations to earn money for college. He portrays Butte through the experiences of two boyhood friends, exploring its rich ethnic diversity, its colorful local characters, its way of dealing with Prohibition, its labor unrest, and the lives of its mining families.

"Here he writes about Butte in the turbulent Twenties, when the city was a lusty, two-fisted copper camp. ... this wonderful book brings to life the Irish, Scandinavians, Slavs, Cornishmen, Syrians, Greeks, Finns and Italians who made up the boisterous mining city. First as observers and then as participants, Dick and his friend Frank see and feel the stark power of the mines - a mile high in the blue sky of Montana, but a mile deep, too, in the sweat and gloom of the mines, which trapped and destroyed. It's Butte - and maybe every town where ethnic groups gather under the shadow of a dominating industry."

A second book, Hobo: A Depression Odyssey, based on his experiences during his vagabond years during the Great Depression, was published posthumously in 2003.

References

Imscheid (talk) 21:10, 11 February 2011 (UTC)