Hal Goodwin: An Appreciation

by Ernie Kelly

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the July 1989 issue of The Yellowback Library. It is reprinted here with the permission of the author.

It was back in the summer of '82, I think. Dad had been dead for a few years and mom had decided to move to a smaller house. I received the ultimatum. Either take my old childhood stuff with me back to Washington or she would have to throw it all out or give it all away. I had taken advantage of my parent's big house to store my series books. Something kept me from giving them away through the years, though Mom had brought the subject up more than once. Anyway, I flew back home and went through all my old stuff one last time. They were all still there. A full set of Rick Brants.

My memory drifted back to 1960. I was over at my friends Steve Smith's house. I was in fourth grade. I told him that I had been reading the Hardy Boys. He said: "Here try this. It's a lot better than the Hardy Boys." He handed me The Pirates of Shan, a Rick Brant Science Adventure. I took it home and read it. I couldn't believe it. What action! It was like something out of Gunga Din. I thirsted for more.

Move the clock forward to 1983. I have my Rick Brants in D.C. now and they look pretty good. I reread a few of them. They stand the test of time. I began to wonder, "now who was this John Blaine anyway? He gave me a lot of pleasure in my early reading years." One day at lunchtime I found myself in the reading room of the Library of Congress. I went to the card catalogue to see of the LOC had a set of Rick Brants. Of course, they did. But lo and behold, I discovered there was a 23rd book entitled Danger Below! that I never had in my original collection. So I took it out and read it on my next few lunch breaks. It was like discovering old friends again. In it a hurricane makes normal passage from Spindrift to the mainland impossible. So what do the boys do? They put on their scuba outfits and swim across the channel deep below the roiling surface where the weather can't affect them. "Yea", I said to myself. "Cool."

The reading room is set on the floor that houses all the major reference books of the library. While sitting in an alcove, a tome just jumped out of the wall at me. It was entitled "Something About the Author." I wondered: "could John Blaine be in there?" I looked in the index. Sure enough he was there. But wait! That wasn't his real name. It was Harold Goodwin. "And will you get this, the guy was a government bureaucrat living right here in D.C.", I muttered. "Well I'll be"... I got back to my office after lunch and picked up the Maryland phone directory. "He's probably dead or moved," I said to myself. "No, here he is! He still lives on Verne street about two miles away from my house!"

Then came the raging debate: "should I write him? It's been 25 years. He probably doesn't care anymore. Oh, what the heck. Nothing ventured, nothing gained." So I wrote Harold Goodwill a fan letter and then he wrote me back. And thus began a friendship that has lasted and grown. Importantly, that letter led me to a whole world of book collecting and friendships.

Over the years my wife and I have visited many times with Hal and his gracious wife Libby and we have had some fun together. They shared in the excitement surrounding the birth of our children and we in their grandchild. Hal was like the dad I didn't have anymore, but still needed.

When I visited Hal's house the first time, I anticipated seeing a lot of Rick Brant trivia. There was surprisingly little, really. Of course, Hal had his set of Rick Brants - three sets actually in dust jacket and picture cover. In the basement he had the original cover art framed for The Flying Stingaree and The Rocket Jumper. I saw the sarong and kris that Chahda wielded in The Pirates of Shan. And out by the pool was a life preserver left over from his houseboat. It read "Spindrift" on it.

Hal Goodwin has had the kind of exciting life most of us just dream about. He is literate and opinionated. He has great leadership ability. . He loves science, adventure and invention. Most of all he loves to read and write and to be involved in nature. These things fit in with Hal's work as a project manager at both NASA and NOAA. He is a recognized expert in marine biology. I guess what I am saying is that Hal Goodwin loves life and has made the most of it. You see, Hal could do those that Rick could do. He invented things. He was an avid scuba diver. For years he had an archery range in his backyard.

The Rick Brant Adventures follow Hal's life and loves through his career and travels. From NASA rocket launches to the years in the Philippines and the South Pacific (The Golden Skull, The Pirates of Shan, 100 Fathoms Under, The Phantom Shark); the Nevada testing grounds (Scarlet Lake Mystery, Rocket Jumper); northern Africa (Egyptian Cat Mystery, Veiled Raiders) and kicking around DC (Whispering Box, Flying Stingaree, Blue Ghost Mystery). It's all mapped out.

Hal's importance to our small group of series book enthusiasts can never be overstated. He was one of the first to get involved and lend a hand at formulating the support groups and collecting society. He gave legitimacy to the LaCrosse Conference and the Corning Conference. He showed others that they didn't have to hide their authorship of juvenile series books behind some corporate cloak of secrecy. He showed them all that they could come out from behind their pseudonyms and is proud of the work they did. And he did this for a specific reason, I believe.

Hal Goodwin never accepted the notion that he was not a legitimate author because his books were designed for a juvenile audience. He knew right from the start that he had written some fine books and when the accolades finally came, so many years later, he basked in them. Recognition and reward finally had come after years of silence. He loves getting those fan letters. Hal's wants nothing more than to be involved in the next juvenile series conference and then the one after that. He spent a lot of time and energy preparing his thoughts for the conference that never happened at the University of South Florida.

I have read a lot of juvenile series books in the past few years, truing to become knowledgeable about various series and their authors. I still have not changed my mind about the Rick Brant Series. It is the best juvenile series of our time. Others are close but no one did it as well and as long and with as much consistency as Hal. When you read these books you know that Hal had a forty-year love affair with his creation, Rick Brant, and with his audience.

Rick Brant had it all. There were some real treacherous villains in The Rocket's Shadow and The Deadly Dutchman. You have incredible climaxes in The Lost City, The Scarlet Lake Mystery, Rocket Jumper and the best of them all Stairway to Danger. There were inventions ahead of their time in The Whispering Box, The Electronic Mind Reader and The Ruby Ray Mystery and there were some great twists of plot, ala Ken Holt in Sea Gold and The Blue Ghost Mystery.

And the writing is stellar. Fred Woodworth has pointed out that Hal wrote an entire chapter in The Caves of Fear where Rick does nothing but follow wax drippings in the labyrinth. It is a brilliantly written chapter that keeps you hanging on every twist and turn. I can state categorically that no Stratemeyer writer would have ever been allowed to keep such a chapter in one of the juvenile series books, assuming they had the creativity to think of it in the first place.

Hal wrote a final book in the series call The Magic Talisman, which was never released. Several of us kept prodding Hall through the years to dust off the manuscript and think seriously about having it published. He would take it out from time to time but always opted against doing anything with it. He said it would require too much editing, etc. I think the real problem was summed up in Hal's closing remarks at the Corning Conference.

He quoted Somerset Maugham who said: "the real reason for the universal applause that comforts the declining years of the author…is that intelligent people, after the age of 30, read nothing at all. As they grow older, the books they read in their youth are lit with its glamour, and wit every year that passes they ascribe greater merit to the author that wrote them." Hal was afraid that the audience he had written The Magic Talisman for was gone and could never return.

Yet somewhere along the line, Hall changed his mind on The Magic Talisman. He sat down earlier this year, reworked it and agreed to have it published. Knowing Hal, I think his decision to finish the book and have it published revolved around one thing. He recognized that there was no reason to believe that the book would not appeal to persons who weren't even familiar with the Rick Brant series. The point is, each individual Rick Brant is fully able to stand on it sown as a good story, with or without the rest of the series.

In that speech at Corning, Hal Goodwin summed up his contributions as a juvenile series author by saying that what he really tried to do was nothing more complicated than to tell a few good stories. Stories that kids could read and enjoy. It is really that simple. So, there is one more story to go. Now tell me that doesn't make your day?