Richard Bach

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Richard David Bach (born June 23, 1936) is an American writer.

Bach is best known as the author of several of the 1970s' best-sellers, including Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970) and Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977).

Bach has written numerous works of fiction as well as non-fiction flight-related titles. The bulk of Bach's books have been semi-autobiographical, based on true or fictionalized events from his life to illustrate his philosophy.

Bach's books promote the belief that our apparent physical limits and mortality are simply appearances.

Bach is known for his passion for aviation and his books relating to flying in a metaphorical sense.

Since the age of 17, Bach has been interested in flying as a hobby.

Bach was seriously injured on approach to landing at Friday Harbor, Washington, when the plane clipped some power lines and crashed upside down in a field in late August 2012.

Early life

Bach was born in Oak Park, Illinois, to Roland R. and Ruth Shaw Bach. His father, who was an American Red Cross chapter manager, was a member of the American Red Cross chapter. In 1955, Bach attended Long Beach State College.

Bach's first airplane flight took place at the age of 14, when his mother was seeking a seat on the board of Long Beach, California. Paul Marcus, her campaign manager, told Richard that he flew planes and welcomed him on a flight in his Globe Swift.

Personal life

Bette Jeanne Franks, Bach's first wife, had six children. Patterns: Tales of Flight and of Life, a book about her life as a pilot and single mother, is also a pilot. The bulk of Richard's aviation writing was typed and edited by her. They divorced in 1970, and Bach spent years without seeing his children.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, his son and Bette, named after Bach's titular character Jonathan Livingston Seagull's bestseller, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, is a software programmer and journalist. He wrote the 1993 book Above the Clouds about growing up without knowing his father and then meeting him as a college student. Richard granted his permission, but he added that it involved some personal history that he did not see in print.

Robert, Kristel, James Marcus Bach, Erika, and their youngest daughter, Bethany, was killed in a car crash at the age of 15 in 1985.

Leslie Parrish, a young actress who appeared in the film Jonathan Livingston Seagull in 1981, married him in 1981. In two of his subsequent books, The Bridge Across Forever and One, the family's relationship and Bach's notion of soulmates were among their subjects. In 1999, the two couples divorced.

In April 1999, Bach married Sabryna Nelson-Alexopoulos, his third wife. They divorced on April 1, 2011.

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Aviation career

Bach served in the United States Navy Reserve and then in the 141st Fighter Squadron of the New Jersey Air National Guard as a Republic F-84F Thunderstreak fighter pilot. He has worked at a variety of positions, including as a technical writer for Douglas Aircraft and as a contributing editor for Flying Magazine. He served in the USAF reserve and was deployed in France in 1960. He later became a barnstormer.

Bach and his buddy Chris Cagle travelled to Ireland in the summer of 1970, where they appeared in flying sequences for Roger Corman's film Von Richthofen and Brown. They flew a variety of World War I aircraft from Lynn Garrison's former Canadian pilots' collection. When Bach wrote articles for Avian, Garrison's aviation journal, Bach and Garrison met for the first time.

The bulk of Bach's books revolve around flight, from the beginnings, which are solely about flying aircraft, to Stranger to the Ground, his first book, to later works in which he used flight as a philosophical metaphor.

Literary career

In The Wall Street Journal, Bach's first book, the autobiographical Stranger to the Ground (1963), described the deployment of his Air National Guard unit to France, which was welcomed warmly by Edmund Fuller.

After the manuscript was rejected by several others, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a tale about a seagull who flew for the love of flying rather than simply to catch food, was published by Macmillan Publishers in 1970. It appeared in Soaring, the Soaring Society of America's magazine. Russell Munson's book, which featured photographs of seagulls in flight, became a number-one bestseller. The book, which contained fewer than 10,000 words, has sold more than 1 million copies in 1972 alone. In the early 1970s, the book's unexpected success was widely distributed in the media.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull was converted into a film of the same name by Paramount Pictures Corporation in 1973, with a soundtrack by Neil Diamond. Bach, the driving force behind Nothing by Chance, a documentary film based on his book of the same name, appeared in 1975. The film depicts modern barnstorming around the United States in the 1970s. Bach commissioned a group of his acquaintances who were pilots to recreate the barnstormer era.

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, published in 1977, chronicles an encounter with a modern-day messiah who has decided to abandon.

Bach was killed in an aircraft landing crash on San Juan Island, Washington, on August 31, 2012. When the landing gear clipped some power lines at a private airport, he was landing a 2008 Easton Gilbert G Seah (N346PE) and he had nicknamed Puff. He crashed upside down in a field about two miles from Friday Harbor, knocking down two poles and igniting a small grass fire.

Bach was estimated to be in serious but stable condition the day after the crash, with a head injury and a fractured shoulder. Bach was hospitalized for four months. He said that his near-death journey inspired him to finish the fourth part of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which had been first published in three parts.

Travels with Puff had been sent to his publisher the day before his death, according to Publishers Weekly in December 2012. Puff's travels were announced on March 19, 2013.

Bach released Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Learner in 2014. The book incorporates the tale of Bach's real-life aircraft crash, with the author imagining that the "messiah" (Don Shimoda), who aids him with his difficult medical recovery, is present.

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