Harry Lawton(1927-2005)

Born on December 11, 1927, Harry Lawton grew up in Long Beach, California where he developed a passion for reading and writing during childhood. After high school, Lawton enrolled at University of California in Berkeley to study Journalism. There, he also wrote for its newspapers and magazines. Always a visionary, he opened the famous Haunted Bookstore in Berkeley, which specialized in rare Western Americana. Harry then moved to Riverside where he was hired as a reporter for The Press-Enterprise. While writing for the newspaper, he got interested in a story about Willie Boy, a Pauite-Chemehuevi Indian who falls into a forbidden love story. The tragic true story got Lawton's attention immediately. He then spent the next three years researching on the Morongo Indian Reservation in the California Desert. The result became the award winning novel "Willie Boy: a Desert Manhunt" (1960) which was later made into a movie, Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969), starring Robert Redford. Enormously respected by his fellow writers, Lawton was very active in the preservation of the Native American Community. He helped found the California Museum of Photography; The Malki Museum, and also the Malki Press, a non-profit organization responsible for publishing books about Native Americans in California. He founded the Creative Writing Program and the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology at University of California. Lawton died on November 20, 2005 in Dana Point, California. A month later a celebration of his life was held in Riverside, honoring his great contribution to the California History.