Background
Born in Plainfield, New Hampshire in 1921, Sam Keith was the son of a wildlife artist, Merle Vincent Keith.
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Sam Keith
Edit ProfileEducation
He enrolled at Cornell University after the war on the GI Bill and graduated with a degree in English, with an eye toward being a writer
Career
In 2014, Keith"s lost manuscript First Wilderness: My Quest in the Territory of Alaska was published. As a teen, Keith joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and served in Elgin, Oregon, building roads. During World World War II, Keith enlisted in the Marines, where he served as a radio gunner.
He was shot down over the Pacific and survived.
1n 1953, Keith lit out from his Massachusetts home to seek adventure in Alaska. He found a job as a laborer on the Kodiak Naval Base (see Base Support Unit Kodiak ), and there met Richard (Dick) Proenneke, who was working as a diesel mechanic.
The two became friends, and during their time in Alaska, went on numerous hunting and fishing trips together. During a trip to visit Dick Proenneke at his cabin in Twin Lakes in 1970, Keith suggested that he take Proenneke"s journals describing the time he spent building a cabin on the shores of Twin Lakes, Alaska, and turn them into a book
Book excerpts and some of Proenneke"s 16mm movies were used in the popular documentary "Alone in the Wilderness", which continues to air on Public Broadcasting Service. The two remained good friends, trading hundreds of letters over their lifetimes.
Both men died within a month of each other in 2003. Ten years later, Keith’s son-in-law, children's book author/illustrator Brian Lies, discovered an unpublished manuscript by Keith in an archive box in their garage. Foreign the first time, forty years after it was written, the story of Keith’s own Alaska experiences, at turns harrowing and funny, was published.
Included are photos and excerpts from his journals, letters, and notebooks, which create a compelling and poignant memoir of search and discovery.
Achievements
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Born
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Died
2003 (aged 82) -
Nationality
United States