Richard Willard Armour

Author, Poet. He is best remembered as a writer of whimsical humor and satirical verse, using "wordplay" to his advantage in an effort to take the dullness out of studying and make learning enjoyable. He wrote more than 60 books, mostly with free verse and in a style that parodies dull academic tones, with many footnotes, fake bibliographies, quiz sections, and glossaries. Born Richard Willard Armour, his father was a druggist. After high school he attended Pomona College, Pomona, California and Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, graduating with a Doctorate Degree in English Philosophy. In his early writing career, he focused on serious literature, with a biography on English poet Bryan Waller Procter in 1935 and co-editing a series of observations by contemporaries about English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1940. When the US entered World War II in December 1941, he joined the US Army and became an antiaircraft artillery officer and was awarded a Legion of Merit with oak leaf cluster. Upon completion of his combat tour, he was assigned to the general staff at the War Department in Washington DC, rising to the rank of colonel. After the war he became a professor of English at Scripps College in Claremont, California from 1945 to 1966. His satirical books, such as "It All Started with Columbus" (1955), "It All Started with Europa" (1955), "It all Started with Eve" (1956), "It All Started with Marx" (1956), "Twisted Tales from Shakespeare" (1957), and "It All Started with Stones and Clubs" (1967), were filled with puns and plays on words that gave the reader the impression of someone who had not been attentive in class and thereby getting basic facts incorrectly, all to a humorous effect. In 1959 he wrote his autobiography "Drug Store Days", based on his childhood experiences. From the late 1960 to the early 1980s he wrote a number of children's books, including "The Adventures of Egbert the Easter Egg", "Animals on the Ceiling". "A Dozen Dinosaurs", "Odd Old Animals", "Sea Full of Whales", "Who's in Holes", "Strange Monsters of the Sea", "Insects All Around Us", and "Have You Ever Wished You Were Something Else?". At Scripps College, he became an English professor and dean of faculty, and later a member of the Board of Trustees at Claremont McKenna College. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Whittier College.