A Mentor, a Writer, and a True Friend

A Mentor, a Writer, and a True Friend

A big smile split Dusty’s face… “Well, come on over here and sit down.” I knew in that moment that I had found a mentor.

Terry Alexander, Saddlebag Dispatches Staff Writer

WHAT CAN YOU SAY about Dusty Richards? He was a friend and mentor, a good man, and a fantastic writer ready and willing to spend time with fledging writers. He offered his experience and years of expertise to help make every story better.

RONALD LEE RICHARDS was born on November 11, 1937, in Chicago, Illinois. His parents were John C. R. Richards and Jean E. Richards. His given first name got very little use. No one knew him as Ronald Lee. He was always Dusty. His father was a power plant engineer. When he was thirteen his family moved to Mesa, Arizona. A year later they moved to Phoenix. Dusty loved the Arizona lifestyle. He rode horses and participated in cattle roundups. His mother feared he’d become one of the broken-down cowboys without a true home. He graduated North Phoenix High School in 1955. He received his Bachelors-of-Science degree from Arizona State in 1960. During his Arizona years, he was hired as an extra in several movies. Bus Stop with Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray and Johnny Guitar with Joan Crawford come to mind.

He told me once how he came to be in Arkansas. After he got his degree, he needed to find a job. Turned out that Arkansas was advertising for teachers. He and a friend came to the Natural State seeking employment. Dusty stayed, but the friend went back to Arizona. He taught high school biology and science at Huntsville and one year at Winslow. During the early days, he owned a cattle ranch near Winslow, Arkansas.

On June 5, 1961, he married Patricia Ann Donahoe. They had two daughters, Anna and Rhonda. They later moved to Springdale near Beaver Lake. He worked as an auctioneer, spent thirty-two years as a USDA Inspector at Tyson Foods, and then worked for Channel 40/29 in Springdale doing the Farm Report.

His ultimate goal was to be a western novelist—to join his heroes on the spinning book racks, to share space with Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour. He spent some time at Zane Grey’s cabin in Arizona and promised himself that one day his westerns would be on the bookshelves.

VISITING LEGENDARY WESTERN WRITER ZANE GREY’S CABIN IN ARIZONA. DUSTY ALWAYS SAID HE SAT ON THE CABIN’S STEPS AND PROMISED HIS HERO’S SPIRIT THAT HE’D BECOME A FAMOUS WESTERN WRITER, TOO.

Dusty Richards

I met Dusty in the early 90s, not exactly sure of the year. His first novel, Noble’sWay, had been published and From Hell to Breakfast, the first adventure of the Rice Sisters, had just been released. I was at my first Oklahoma Writers Federation, Inc. conference. I wandered around attending various workshops when Peggy Fielding spotted me and struck up a conversation. She asked me what I was writing, and I told her I enjoyed westerns. She told me they were a tough sell, but she knew just the person I needed to talk to and led me to Dusty Richards.

After the introductions, Dusty asked me which author I enjoyed reading. I mentioned Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour, then I said that my favorite western author was Elmer Kelton. A big smile split his face, and he said, ‘Well, come over here and sit down.’ We spent the afternoon talking about cattle and vaccinations, hay baling, tractors, and the like. He told me about the Ozark Creative Writers Conference in Eureka Springs and invited me to come there. I think I’ve missed three conferences in Eureka since then. His wife Pat came to the book room, and Dusty introduced me to her. She was always a great lady and always friendly.

The second time I ran into Dusty was at Eureka Springs. He’d had a new Rice Sisters novel published entitled, By the Cut of Your Clothes. He told me then that it was going to be a trilogy, and the third novel was going to be titled Raring to Go. He was naturally excited and always enthusiastic. At that time, he was still entering a few contests at the various conferences as well as sponsoring different contests and judging others. He usually always won something with his entries.

I ran into Dusty again at OWFI the next year. He told me that Pocket Books had released him from his contract, and they weren’t going to publish the next Rice Sisters book. To my knowledge, though, that novel has never been published. He wasn’t going to give up. He never would even think of giving up. When we talked at that conference, he talked a lot about bunch quitters. That’s an old Cowboy term. When the old cowboys were driving cattle from south Texas to Kansas and Missouri, several tried to circle back and go home. These were bunch quitters. He wasn’t going to be a bunch quitter. He wanted to lead the herd. I missed the writer’s conference at Eureka Springs that year and didn’t see Dusty until the following year.

Dusty rose from the canvas like a championship boxer and kept moving forward, to borrow a line from one of the Rocky movies. He published a fewbooks with small publishers before receiving an offer to pen some Jake Logan novels. For those that don’t know, Jake Logan was a pen name used by several writers that wrote John Slocum novels. Slocum was an adult western character. The novels were written according to a formula, and the hero was required to have carnal knowledge of the heroine in the piece after a certain page count.

I’ve tried to find out how many John Slocum adventures Dusty wrote. I asked several people and was given a wide range of numbers. Some estimates were as high as seventy, while others had the number more in the range of thirty-five or thirty-six. I found a website that specialized in selling autographed books.

The site offered nine Jake Logan books autographed by Dusty Richards for sale. The earliest one was Slocum and the Apache Ransom, Number 209, and the latest was SlocumandtheSenorita, Number 261.

When I met Dusty, he was still employed by Channel 40/29 in Springdale. After he left the station, he devoted himself to writing on a full-time basis, with occasional breaks to do some auctioneering and rodeo announcing. For twenty years he served as the announcer for the rodeo of the Ozarks. He also enjoyed the annual Chuckwagon races at the Bar 0 F Ranch near Clinton, Arkansas. Dusty was a member of the PRCA and the IPRA.

He was very active in various writer’s organizations. He served on several boards and was Presi- dent of Ozark Creative Writers and Ozark Writers League on various occasions. He was a former Vice-President of Oklahoma Writers Federation Incorporated. I don’t believe he was ever President of that organization, but I could be wrong. He had a long association with Western Writers of America and was a past president. An organization that was close to his heart was the Northwest Arkansas Writers Workshop. He served as president of that group for many years.

When you’re talking about writer’s groups and Dusty Richards, you have to talk about Dusty’s Girls. He and Velda Brotherton created the Northwest Arkansas Writers Workshop many years ago, and the group came to be known as Dusty’s Girls. One year at an OCW conference (I believe), Pam Thompson won an award. I can’t remember who it was that introduced Pam as being in the Fort Smith Writers Group. Pam stood up and said, ‘No, I’m one of Dusty’s Girls.’ I talked to Ellen Withers at the 2021 OCW conference, and she told me that she was one of Dusty’s Girls, too. Dusty also created the Arkansas Ridge Writers for the OWFI conference. For a long time the group went head-to-head with the Tulsa Nightwriters and the Oklahoma City Writers Group. Today the Ridge Writers are barely hanging on.

Dusty had a favorite breakfast table at Myrtle Mae’s, a restaurant at the Best Western Inn of the Ozarks, where the OCW conference is held every year. I’ve sat at the special table and enjoyed breakfast with Dusty and Pat, and sometimes Dusty and some other writers. He’d be at his table and see you come in and wave you over. I know several people sat at the Dusty table over the years. I’ve seen Dusty win several writing awards in the ’90s and accepted a few from him myself. He always had a handshake and a pat on the back for the contest winners.

In 2000, the Arkansas Writers Conference honored Dusty with the Cowboy Culture Award for the long hours he spent helping aspir- ing writers. TheNatural won Fiction Book of the Year at the Oklahoma Writers’ Federation writers conference in 2003. A feat he duplicated the next year when TheAbileneTrail, written as part of the Ralph Compton’s Trail Driver series, won the award again. In all he produced five books under the Ralph Compton handle, the last being TrailtoCottonwoodFalls.

I was lucky enough to be on hand at the Arkansas Writers Conference in Little Rock in 2004 to see Dusty inducted into the Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame. Three years later in Springfield, Missouri, he won two Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America for The HorseCreekIncident in the Best Original Paperback Novel Category, He also won for Best Original Short Fiction for the short story “Comanche Moon.” In 2010 he was honored with the Will Rogers Medallion Award for western fiction for his novel Texas Blood Feud. That same year The Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western History Museum honored Dusty with the Western Heritage Award in the Literary/Western Novel category for TheSundownChaser. A guy named Tom Selleck was on hand and picked up a minor award. In 2016, he finished in second in the Will Rogers Medallion Awards in the Western Romance category for A Bride for Gil. Dusty won his third Spur Award in 2017 for The MustangerandtheLady in the Best Western Traditional Novel Category. In 2018, Dusty received a Special Memorial Award for GoldintheSun in the western novel category at the Will Rogers Medallion Awards, and another for the Mountain Man novel Zekial in 2019.

The Mustanger and the Lady— which also happened to be Dusty’s 150th published novel was also adapted for the silver screen with the movie Painted Woman in 2017. The film was produced by Chasing Sunsets Pictures and Dark Highway films. The movie starred Stef Dawson as Julie Richards, Matt Dallas as Frank Dean, Kiowa Gordon as Chato, and David Thomas Jenkins as Vince Wagner. The movie was filmed in Oklahoma with James Cotton directing.

To say Dusty was ecstatic that a movie was being made from one of his books would be an understatement. He sent an e-mail to me a few days before the movie was scheduled to be shown in Poteau, Oklahoma. It said, ‘Hey, Pard. They’re going to show my movie at the theater in Poteau this weekend. Come down and watch a good movie and eat some supper with us. Some of the actors and the director will be there. Hope you can make it.’ That was the end of October of 2017.

Phyllis and I met up with Dusty and several other people that night. We sat by Dusty and Pat and enjoyed a great western film. Afterward we went to Sirloin Stockade for an early birthday celebration. I got Dusty to autograph one of the small posters from the movie and still have it put away today.

Unfortunately, this was the final time I saw Dusty and Pat alive. They were both involved in a horrific car accident on December 19, 2017. Pat passed from this life on January 10, 2018, which happened to beher birthday. Dusty hung on for just over another week until January 18. I don’t think he wanted to be around without Pat.

Dusty was all about the craft of writing and helping others learn and hone the skill. I sat in the audience several times and listened to him talk about scene and sequel, how to break a novel down to four basic parts. While there are only seven basic plotlines, today’s writer had to put a special spin on those stories and make them unique. What can anyone say about Dusty Richards? He was a great friend, a good man, and a mentor to thousands of people across several states, but most of all, he was a dear friend to me.

—Terry Alexander and his wife, Phyllis, live on a small farm near Porum, Oklahoma. They have three children, thirteen grandchildren, and four great grandchildren. Terry is a member of The Oklahoma Writers Federation, Ozark Creative Writers, Tahlequah Writers, Western Writers of America, and the Western Fictioneers. If you see him at a conference, though, don’t let him convince you to take part in one of his trivia games—he’ll stump you every time.