Sloan Wilson(1920-2003)

While a student at Harvard College, Wilson engaged in many sailing adventures aboard his father's yacht whith the assistance of his college friends. In 1942, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Wilson received a reserve commission in the U.S. Coast Guard, serving on the Greenland Patrols as well as in the Pacific Theater of Operations. Shortly after the war his first book, "Voyage to Somewhere" was published to tepid critical reviews and public reaction. Wilson took a postion as a writer at Time magazine and soon became an organizer of that publication's publisher's committee on public education. With encouragement from Dick Simon, of Simon and Shuster, Sloan wrote the classic "Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" which was to beocme an anthem during the 1950s. His next work "A Summer Place" although not as critically acclaimed, was a national best-seller also. Both books were made into very successful motion pictures. After a divorce from his wife of over twenty years, and by all accounts, a blissful marriage to a woman fourteen years his junior, Wilson continued to write fiction based mostly on his life experiences. In retrospect, it is a shame that much of his later work was not as critically appraised and read, as much of it is classic 'everyman' told in a fine, direct manner. His autobiography "What to Wear to the Party" is both candid and humorous. "Ice Brothers" is arguably the best fiction ever written about the Coast Guard, perhaps one of the best examples of Twentieth Century fiction ever written.