Cole, William H. Jr.

Description

William Rossa Cole (November 20, 1919 – August 2, 2000) was an American editor, anthologist, columnist, author, and writer of light verse. He produced around 75 books, most of them anthologies.

He was born William Harrison Cole on November 20, 1919 to William Harrison Cole and Margaret O’Donovan-Rossa of Staten Island, New York. He was the brother of Rossa Cole. His grandfather was the Irish Fenian leader Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa.

William “Bill” worked in a deli and a bookstore in the 1930s. In Rye he lived at 22 Locust Ave.

Bill enlisted and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He served in the 28th Infantry Division in Europe during World War II. He rose to sergeant and was awarded the Purple Heart.

During the Battle of the Bulge, Bill was injured by shrapnel from a strafing German plane in the Northwestern French town of Saint-L├┤. For the rest of his life he would say that he was injured in “Saint-L├┤ in the back.” Read his autobiographical essay on his WWII experience “Goofing Off”.

After military service, he took various jobs in the publishing industry, serving as publicity director at Alfred A. Knopf from 1946 to 1958, publicity director and editor at Simon & Schuster from 1958 to 1961, and, with Viking Press, co-publisher of William Cole Books.

He was also a prolific writer and anthologist, editing and writing over 75 books. Many of his books were honored by the American Library Association, including I Went to the Animal Fair: A Book of Animal Poems (named a notable book of 1958, and on the List of Notable Children’s Books of 1940–1959), Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls: Poems (named a notable book of 1964), and The Birds and Beasts Were There: Animal Poems (honored in 1965).

Bill’s whimsical poetry often appeared in Light Quarterly and was widely anthologized, as in The Oxford Book of American Light Verse and various collections by Willard R. Espy.

Reviewing eleven collections of poetry for children, Selden Rodman (aided by his own three children) found Bill’s Oh, How Silly! and Jack Prelutsky’s Toucans Two the only two among them that were “literate and consistently readable”. The former was a “really masterful collaboration” by Bill and its illustrator, Tomi Ungerer.

Bill wrote the regular column “Trade Winds” in Saturday Review from 1974 to 1979; a book review column for Endless Vacation, from around 1990 to 2000; and contributed to Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Yorker.

William Rossa Cole died in his Manhattan home, aged 80, on August 2, 2000. He was memorialized in a poem by Seamus Heaney, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Bill was married twice: to Peggy Bennett in 1947 and to Galen Williams in 1967. Both marriages ended in divorce. He was survived by two daughters and two sons.