User:Glidingloon/Richard A. Wolters

Richard A. Wolters

Richard A. Wolters (** - October 9, 1993) was an avid outdoorsman and prolific author. While possibly best known for the 13 books he authored on dog training, he was also an accomplished sailplane pilot and author of two famous books on the sport of soaring.

The events which lead to his writing on the subject of soaring are described in the introduction to his book, "The Art and Technique of Soaring," (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1971):

"When I decided to sail, I had an outboard motor on my boat. It gave me so much trouble that one day I threw it overboard, was freed, and became a purist.  When I decoded to fly, I decoded to soar.  After the first flight with my instructor he gave me a book to read, saying it was the best he had.  The first chapter was on motors, carburetors, and things like that.  It received the same treatment as the outboard."

Wolters wrote a revolutionary instruction manual on soaring, including actual photographs (from the cockpit looking forward and from the wingtip looking inward) of the sailplane while describing the manuever. This allowed the reader to better conceptualize the instruction being offered.

He was an expert on training hunting dogs. He wrote a number of books on dogs, including three published by Dutton, "Gun Dog" (1961), "Family Dog" (1963) and "Beau, From Both Ends of His Leash" (1966), and "The Labrador Retriever" (Peterson Prints, 1982).

Mr. Wolters was also a chemical engineer, a parachutist, a teacher of art history and photography and a magazine editor who wrote extensively about dogs and field sports. He especially admired Labradors for their diligence, devotion, stamina, pleasant temperament and ability to become family pets.

In his later years, he worked part-time at the Orvis sporting goods store in Midtown Manhattan, near Grand Central Station.

He was born in Philadelphia and graduated from Pennsylvania State University. He died from a heart attack after he landed an ultralight aircraft that he had been piloting near his farm in Hanover, Virginia. He was 73.

General References
New York Times, Obituary, October 14, 1993