About the Author

Robert Manry says of himself: “I was born in June, 1918, in Landour, India, a town situated about 7,000 feet above sea level at the summit of the first range of the Himalayan Mountains, and I had most of my elementary school education and all of my high school education at Woodstock School there. With the exception of interludes totaling four or five years, I lived in India until I was 19.

“I did my first sailing on the Jumna River at Allahabad, India, where my father, Dr. James C. Manry, a Presbyterian missionary-educator, taught philosophy and English at Ewing College.

“In late December, 1936, I left India and, on my way to the United States, stopping for a semester of study at Lingnan University, Canton, China. I left China in 1936, via the port of Tienstsin, the day before the Japanese attacked at the Marco Polo bridge near Peking, starting the long war that eventually involved the United States.

“I entered Antioch College in the fall of 1937 and after many vicissitudes, among them service with the 66th Infantry Division in France, Germany and Austria, earned an A.B. degree in political science. I subsequently worked as a reporter on newspapers in Washington Court House, Ohio, and Pittsburgh and Erie, Pennsylvania. In 1953 I joined the Plain Dealer as a copy editor and I am still with that paper, although presently on a leave of absence.

“In 1950 I married the former Virginia Place of Pittsburgh, whose father and brother were newspapermen, and we have a daughter, Robin, now fifteen, and a son, Douglas, now twelve.

“My principal sideline interest, besides sailing, is photography, especially nature photography.”