Allan W. Eckert

Allan Wesley Eckert (January 30, 1931 – July 7, 2011) was an American historian, historical novelist, and naturalist.

Eckert was born in Buffalo, New York, and raised in the Chicago, Illinois area, but had been a long-time resident of Bellefontaine, Ohio, near where he attended college. As a young man, he hitchhiked around the United States, living off the land and learning about wildlife. He began writing about nature and American history at the age of thirteen, eventually becoming an author of numerous books for children and adults. His children's novel, Incident at Hawk's Hill, was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal in 1972. One of his novels tells how the great auk became extinct.

In addition to his novels, he also wrote several unproduced screenplays and more than 225 "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" television shows for which he received an Emmy Award.

In a 1999 poll conducted by the Ohioana Library Association, jointly with Toni Morrison, Allan W. Eckert was voted "Favorite Ohio Writer of All Time."

Eckert died in his sleep on July 7, 2011, in Corona, California, at the age of 80.

Eckert is the playwright of the outdoor drama entitled Tecumseh! which, in 1997, celebrated its 25th year of production at the multimillion-dollar Sugarloaf Mountain Amphitheater near Chillicothe, Ohio. His book on Blue Jacket was dramatized for outdoor performances and opened in 1982 outside Xenia, Ohio. The production was eventually closed due to financial difficulties but not before it was reported to have put over nine million dollars yearly into the local economy of southwest Ohio.

Eckert's Pulitzer Prize-nominated book A Time of Terror: The Great Dayton Flood was adapted for the stage as 1913: The Great Dayton Flood by W. Stuart McDowell and Timothy Nevits in 1996 and performed at the Wright State University Department of Theatre, Dance and Motion Pictures, featuring recorded narration by Martin Sheen, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. The production won a number of awards from the American College Theatre Festival XXIX at the Riffe Center, Columbus, Ohio, and subsequently opened the 1997 festival in the Kennedy Center, returning to Dayton that fall, where it played in the Victoria Theatre in Dayton.

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