User:RonBrackin

Ron Brackin is the author of the NYT best seller Son of Hamas, along with a dozen other books, including Nevermore to Die, Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Deadly Illusion, You Are Eagerly Invited, and Dracula: a bible study.

Ron was born in Lakewood, Ohio on Thanksgiving Day, 1945, to Ed and Friedel Brackin. His father was a fireman, his mother emigrated to America from Germany just before the invasion of Poland.

In 1954, the Brackins enrolled their only child in the Lakewood Little Theater school (now the Beck Center for the Arts), where he studied acting, a passion which continued through high school and college.

After serving in the U.S. Navy, Ron worked a succession of production jobs in radio and television—in Cleveland, as associate producer of Harv Morgan’s, “Contact” show at KYW Radio (NBC) and an associate director at WKBF-TV (Kaiser). In 1969, he moved to Hollywood to become a standup comic. While trying to break in, Ron held several jobs simultaneously, working full time in the traffic department at KTLA-TV, doing odd jobs with an experimental theater, and bar tending at Shakey’s Pizza.

One night, performing on a talent night at The Palamino Club, in North Hollywood, Ron met a Canadian comic named Murray Langston. They teamed up and, as Brackin and Langston, built their act at showcase clubs like Knopow's Comedy Room, along with other young comics including Richard "Cheech" Marin and Tommy Chong. Their first paying job was at the Redd Foxx Club on La Cienega, on the bill with the Horace Silver Quintette. Brackin and Langston broke up when the gig ended, and Murray went on to become "The Unknown Comic" of Gong Show fame and continued to build a career in the industry.

Ron Brackin went on to become weekend news anchor for WASH-FM (Metromedia), then moved to WTOP-AM, the CBS all-news radio station in Washington DC. And he served as a congressional press secretary during the Reagan Administration.

He has traveled extensively in the Middle East as an investigative journalist. He was in the West Bank and Gaza during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, on assignment in Baghdad and Mosul after the fall of Iraq, and more recently with the rebels and refugees of Southern Sudan and Darfur.

Ron has contributed articles and columns to many publications, including USA Today and The Washington Times. Brackin, Ron, April 3, 2014