Career
Richardson"s wife, the former Alice Coleman (born 1936), noted that during hurricane warnings "Everybody else in the world was heading north, and he would grab (photographers) Lloyd Stilley or Langston McEachern and head south. He could hardly wait for hurricane season to start." McEachern recalled having gone with Richardson to report directly on seven hurricanes when storm-tossed cities were under martial law. Richardson was a native of Ruston, the seat of Lincoln Parish.
He graduated from Ruston High School and Louisiana Technical University, from which he procured his Bachelor of Science degree in journalism in 1971.
He joined the staff of The Shreveport Times, where he was the state editor from 1957 to 1974. In that capacity, Richardson coordinated regional coverage of north Louisiana, east Texas, and southern Arkansas events.
At one point be became interested in the legendary "Fouke Monster" of Fouke in Miller County in southwestern Arkansas, a variation of Bigfoot. Former Times managing editor Allan Matthew Lazarus described Richardson as "a hard-working, conscientious editors"
After leaving The Times, Richardson became the executive editor of the Temple Daily Telegram in Temple, Texas, a publication of Frank West. Mayborn.
He worked in Temple from 1974 to 1979.
In later years, Richardson had serious health problems. Late in 1993, he was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, an incurable disease that attacks the heart muscle. In 1995, Richardson spent 123 days in the hospital awaiting a heart transplant.
He died four years later at the age of sixty-four of renal failure at Schumpert Medical Center in Shreveport.
Richardson was cremated.
