Charles Ray Willeford
CHARLES RAY WILLEFORD, son of ALLEEN EDWARDS SAWYERS and CHARLES RAY WILLEFORD, was born January 2, 1919 in Little Rock, Arkansas,1869, 99 and died March 27, 1988 in Miami, Dade, Florida.1869, 99
Obituaries
Palm Beach Post, March 29, 198812011
Miami writer Willeford dies
MIAMI — Miami writer and teacher Charles R. Willeford, who won international fame and a bit of fortune near the end of his 50-year career with a series of South Florida detective novels, is dead.
Willeford died of a massive heart attack in his South Miami home Sunday, just two weeks after his latest novel, The Way We Die Now, appeared in local bookstores. He was 69.
The author was enjoying the harvest of his life's work — critical acclaim for the scalpel-sharp clarity of his writing and popular success for the four novels in his Hoke Moseley detective series.
In 1987 and 1988, five new works were published or about to be published — two novels, tow autobiographical works and a short-story collection. Three out-of-print novels were reissued. Despite a long illness, he was nearly finished with a new book — a critical study of self-taught writers in the hard-boiled detective genre, to be titled Primitives, said his wife, Miami News editorial writer Betsy Willeford.
Though Willeford worked for many years in relative obscurity, "he was not bitter. He was reveling in his good fortune," said Coral Gables bookstore owner Mitchell Kaplan, a friend. "Each new book was like the birth of a child to him."
Willeford chose writing as his craft at age 13 and kept at it for the rest of his life, producing more than 20 books of fiction, non-fiction, drama and poetry. To support himself, he was a hobo, prizefighter, soldier, teacher and book reviewer.
Willeford reviewed books for The Miami News, The Miami Herald and The Washington Post, and taught writing for more than 20 years at Miami-Dade Community College and the University of Miami.
Friends also remember Willeford as a devastating poker player and an inspired bon vivant.
"Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is the best place to write," he once told Miami New columnist John Keasler. "After breakfast, you hang around the pool with the girls. . . After lunch you take a nap. In the afternoon you play Scrabble. After dinner you go to the casino. During the months I spent working in Haiti I only had to write six pages."
Keasler recognized this account for what it was — part fact and mostly fiction. "When a certain breed of writer writes, we're scrabbling, baby," he commented in a column.
Willeford's fame began with the popularity of his gritty detective novels about Miami cop Hoke Mosely. The first book in the series, Miami Blues, was published in 1984 and later featured in a Miami Vice episode, in a scene that showed a cop on stakeout reading the book.
The four Hoke Mosely books — Miami Blues, New Hope for the Dead, Sideswipe and The Way We Die Now — brought Willeford's black humor and his terse, realistic style to a wide audience.
"He was just breaking through, just getting recognized," Keasler said.
An autobiographical work about his childhood, I Was Looking for a Street, is slated for publication in October.
Willeford's first hard-cover book, The Burnt Orange Heresy, published in 1971, told the story of a bitter artist who put an ornate frame around a crack in the wall. It became a best-seller.
Another novel, Cockfighter, was made into a movie starring Warren Oates — an unusual acting role because Willeford's hero never spoke a word. A journal Willeford kept during the filming, Cockfighter Diary, will be published in a collector's edition later this year.
Census Records
| Date | Location | Enumerated Names |
|---|---|---|
| January 2, 19201870 | Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah |
|
