Biography

Great writers like Ernst Hemingway and James Thurber experienced a variety of things. Some would argue it made him a better writer. After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals. After his return to the United States , he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution. Hemingway would write many great books like; Sun Also Rises, the (1926), Torrents of Spring, the (1926), Farewell to Arms, a (1929), To Have and Have Not (1937), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Across the River and into the Trees (1950), Old Man and the Sea, the (1952 about the time Payne was born and his favorite of the Hemingway books), Islands in the Stream (1970) and Garden of Eden (1986).

 If Richard A. Payne had a real hero it would be James G. Thurber. James Thurber’s life was more focused from the very beginning. Thurber moved to New York City in 1926 and a year later he met writer E. B. White (1899–1985) and was taken onto the staff of the New Yorker magazine. In collaboration with White he produced his first book, Is Sex Necessary? (1929). By 1931 his first cartoons began appearing in the New Yorker.

  Like Thurber Payne’s life was filled with harried men, determined women, and, most of all, dogs. Thurber's dogs became something like a national comic institution, and they dotted the pages of a whole series of books. Payne got his first dog ‘Bridge-it’ as an infant and has never been without one to this very day. Thurber's book The Seal in the Bedroom appeared in 1932, followed in 1933 by My Life and Hard Times. He published The Middle-aged Man on the Flying Trapeze in 1935, and by 1937, when he published Let Your Mind Alone!, he had become so successful that he left his position on the New Yorker staff to become a freelance writer and to travel abroad. Payne became a Freelance Writer in 1993.

 The Last Flower appeared in 1939; that year Thurber collaborated with White on a play, The Male Animal. The play was a hit when it opened in 1940. But this was also the year that Thurber was forced to undergo a series of eye operations for cataract and trachoma, two serious eye conditions. His eyesight grew steadily worse until, in 1951, it was so weak that he did his last drawing. He spent the last decade of his life in blindness.

 How do you write an autobiography? Everything a writer writes is in some way an autobiography, in that it is drawn largely from his own life, his experiences, his ideas, thoughts, feelings and the way he sees the world. Everything Richard A. Payne has written to date is to some extent autobiography. Richard A. Payne loves good books and great movies and they have shaped the man he is and whatever has written. Richard A. Payne supposes two things about himself first whatever he writes will reflect his religious views and experiences and his political views, I will share more about that later on.

Richard A. Payne & his idea of the perfect lady

Richard always had bad eye sight and at 40 years of age he became diabetic and his vision continued to worsen. By the time Richard Payne was 55 years old he had written and published hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles and four books. He had written nine books but was only able to sell and publish four by that time; COLLIN THE CANADA GOOSE, in 1992, CHARLIE THE SHY COWBOY in 1993, JIM & RICK’S REAL REEL INDIANS in 1994 and then THE BANJO & THE TELESCOPE in 2009.

 In 1975 Richard A. Payne got to be the leading man in a play entitled A THURBER CARNIVAL, he got to be Walter Mitty (a Thurber character) and James Thurber as he delivered the entire LAST FLOWER to the audience. His first wife was the leading lady of that play, when she got pregnant Payne married her, and she gave birth to his second child a beautiful baby girl. When you have to become the man, you begin to really understand him. I learned to love him with all of my heart. He replaced Hemingway as my favorite writer.

 Richard A. Payne was always a political creature. He first got an interest when President Kennedy was shot and killed. He began developing that interest first working to elect Bobbie Kennedy as President in 1968, by stuffing envelopes. He was active in politics in every election; he was his Democrat Precinct Chairman in the last election as well as an Obama Precinct Captain.  THE BANJO & THE TELESCOPE grew out of the fear of war with Russia, that many children of the 1950’s and 1960’s experienced. That and his love of language and his understanding of the role language can play in world politics.

  Richard A. Payne first trained to be a male nurse, and worked as Emergency Room Technician in a northern Idaho hospital. He worked in nursing homes in Spokane, Washington and then left that line of work to return to school and work in retail sales.

 He studied Fine Art and Communication Studies and Education and collected two more degrees.

 After a bad divorce he moved to California and started all over, with a new career in the Title Insurance Industry. He was an examiner, title officer and accounts manager. He had always had an interest in real estate and construction, having managed several properties for free rent over the years, he moved into property management. He also got a General Contractor’s license. He also got the title insurance license for the state of Colorado .

 Richard A. Payne then returned to what he had trained in college to do, teach and counsel students. He returned to college for a Master’s Degree in Education, specializing in Diversity Learners, and then went straight to work on a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership with a specialization in counseling.  He worked summers as an Enforcement Park Ranger for both Larimer County and the State of Colorado . Mostly he worked as a teacher and counselor for children with disruptive behavior that just happened to be primarily Hispanic as well. 

Richard A. Payne gets special recognition from actor Iron Eyes Cody

 Over the course of thirty years, he had the education and training to become a great writer. THE BANJO & THE TELESCOPE came about at this time. It was surprising to nobody that former Democrat US Senator Tim Wirth from Colorado , supported and endorsed THE BANJO & THE TELESCOPE, he was after all, the President of the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund. But many were surprised when television celebrity Art Linkletter, who is very conservative and Republican. It didn’t stop there former US Senator and Presidential candidate Bob Dole, Idaho Republicans and former US Senators James A. McClure and Steve Symms also jumped on the long list of Payne supporters endorsing the book about friendship between two boys who could not be more different. Conservative Republican US Representative Robert Warren "Bob" Schaffer who had experience with the Russian Language also became a strong supporter of the book. He is also a Roman Catholic like Payne is. The book was written in both English and Russian in the hopes of encouraging children to learn second languages.

 THE BANJO & THE TELESCOPE is the first of at least three (3) books Payne wants to produce to encourage children to learn a second language. He has written two more, one in English, Spanish and Chinese and the other in English, Spanish and Arabic. The later was written to honor his nephew PFC Jesse Alan Givens the first soldier from Colorado to be killed in the Iraqi war. Jesse was featured in the HBO documentary LAST LETTERS HOME and the Life Book by the same title. The death of his nephew made Richard A. Payne think about many things, politics, language and how can you fight a war with people who you do not share a language? He wondered if more wars could be prevented if people could more easily and efficiently communicate with one another?

Richard Payne in Chinese

Richard A. Payne was born in the Southern part of America during the very early 1950’s and watched the America struggle with civil rights issues, and the related problems of intolerance, hatred, prejudice and discrimination. His birth in Augusta , Georgia was followed by moving about twice or three times a year until he left home at the age of 15 so he could finish high school in the same place. It created a man who was resilient, tolerant, compassionate, understanding and adaptable. He was also a man determined to learn, understand and work to make change happen. He wanted to leave this old world better than he found it. It is his hope that his books will do exactly that. He believes all of America's greatest writers were born in The South. 

Music? In his own words.

 When I was a little boy my mother, who lived in the kitchen, had a radio on the counter that she was always listening to. My sisters would sing along with the radio when they would help mom do the cooking, cleaning, laundry. My brother Andy loved Elvis and my brother Joe rock-n-roll with great guitar solos. We had a big stereo in the living room and a very large collection of albums. My mother owned many small businesses as I grew up, several taverns and a country and western night spot called Loafer’s Corners. The music of Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline,  Buck Owens, Charlie Rich, Conway Twitty, Dolly Parton, Tennessee Ernie Ford,  Hank Snow, Hank Williams, Porter Wagner, Chet Atkins, Tammy Wynette,  Marty Robbins and Loretta Lynn would fill the night air. We loved it very much. She had a great country and western band that played there every Friday and Saturday nights. My little brother and sister would lie on a quilt near the back door and listen and watch the farmers and their wives dance until well past midnight. I grew up with music in my life. I learned to love Jim Reeves and Nat King Cole from my mother.

 When I was 14 years old I left home and moved in with a musician, who was also a teacher of mine at the high school I attended in North Idaho . His name was Denis F Carey. He had a stereo system many would die for. He also had a record collection I would die for. He had a reel to reel tape player and hundreds of albums, for big bands of the 1940’s and 1950’s and Jazz all of descriptions but also a multi-cultural collection of European singers and musicians  which he continues to build upon to this very day. We would have drinks and listen until it was time for the news, we would watch the news and then continue listening until Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show came on, then we would watch that and call it a day. I enjoyed that for over 4 years. I learned to love the big bands like; Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Cab Calloway, Gene Krupa, Stan Kenton and many others, from Mr. Carey.

 Then I went out on my own and developed a love for Folk Singers and great vocalists singing ballads and love songs mostly. I love all kinds of music, including classical music which truly is a traditional genre of music conforming to an established form and appealing to critical interest and developed musical taste; Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Frederic (Fryderyk) Chopin, George Frederic Handel, (Franz) Joseph Haydn, (Jacob Ludwig) Felix Mendelssohn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, set together beside Willie Nelson, Neil Diamond, Count Basie, Louie Armstrong,  Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Peter, Paul & Mary, Chuck Mangione and Ray Charles in my record and DVD collection. I also love movie scores. I like the Beach Boys and the Tijuana Brass just for fun.

Richard A. Payne with a hero of his Marty Balin

I love Cleo Lane and Morgana King. I have their records and a rather large collection of canceled concert tickets I have gone to over the years. On my walls I have many autographed pictures of my favorite musicians. I also have a beautiful water-color painting by Marty Balin of a Jazz night club scene, auto-graphed to me. He was the founder of Jefferson Airplane & later Jefferson Starship, a favorite of mine when I was in high school. I couldn’t write a word without music of some kind playing softly in the background.

Religious views 

 Richard A. Payne is a Christian, a Roman Catholic to be exact. The Roman Catholic Church is the world's largest Christian church, representing over half of all Christians and one-sixth of the world's population. This Christian Church based in the Vatican and presided over by a pope and an Episcopal hierarchy is Richard's faith because of a simple fact, the Roman Catholics religious practices follow the holy bible the most closely according to Rick's opinion. Richard A. Payne became a Roman Catholic at the age of 21 years. Richard A. Payne looked in many religious practice and churches before becoming a Roman Catholic. In 1954 he was baptized an Episcopalian at St. James Episcopal Church in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The Episcopalians are Christians too but are in that collection of Protestant Churches, but out of that collection they are in fact the most Catholic-like. 

 The Episcopal Church in America was organized shortly after the American Revolution when it was forced to break with the Church of England on penalty of treason as Church of England clergy were required to swear allegiance to the British monarch, and became, in the words of the 1990 report of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Group on the Episcopate, the first Anglican Province outside the British Isles. Today it is divided into nine provinces and has dioceses outside the United States in Taiwan , Central and South America, the Caribbean and Europe . The Episcopal Diocese of the Virgin Islands encompasses both American and British territory. A part of Richard A. Payne stills loves the church he was baptized in and was a part off for 21 years of his life. The Episcopal Church was active in the Social Gospel movement of the late nineteenth century and since the 1960s and 1970s has played a leading role in the progressive movement and on related political issues. For example, in its resolutions on state issues the Episcopal Church has opposed the death penalty, and supported the civil rights movement and affirmative action. Some of its leaders and priests marched with civil rights demonstrators. Richard embraces these causes also. The Episcopal Church calls for the full civil equality of gay men and lesbians. Most dioceses ordain openly gay men and women; in some, same-sex unions are celebrated with services of blessing. In 2009, the church's General Convention passed resolutions that allowed for gay and lesbian marriages in states where it is legal. About all these issues, individual members and clergy can and do frequently disagree with the stated position of the church, there is NOT this freedom in the American Catholic Church and there are times when this really makes Richard A. Payne uncomfortable.

 The Episcopal Church also ordains women to the priesthood as well as the diaconate and the episcopate, as priests, which of course is NOT likely to ever happen in the Roman Catholic Church. Richard A. Payne would love to live to see openly gay priests in the Catholic Church and women priests and priests of both genders being allowed to marry. Richard A. Payne  is a member of the Catholic Church and understands change must come from within and as the result of hard work and prayer. His years of influence by the Episcopal Church did have a strong influence on him.  He was confirmed a Roman Catholic after the instructions of the Rev. Daniel Hirtz in Springfield, Missouri and was confirmed by then Archbishop Bernard Law, who is now a Cardinal in Rome, in 1974. Richard A. Payne is a big fan and strong supporter of the 26th Presiding Bishop of the American Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori.  Richard A. Payne has studied most of the world's religions and churches and places of worship and tries to write about things will a truly universal appeal.

Political views

 Richard A. Payne is a member of America's Democrat Party. The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. It is the oldest political party in continuous operation in the United States and it is one of the oldest parties in the world. The Democratic Party is committed to keeping our nation safe and expanding opportunity for every American. That commitment is reflected in an agenda that emphasizes the strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, open, honest and accountable government, and securing our nation while protecting our civil rights and liberties. Richard A. Payne believes we are in a critical moment that will reverberate for generations to come. He believes he must work hard to help guide his party to  see us through these troubled times, Democrats must work to end the war in Iraq and refocus our nation's efforts on those who really attacked us on September 11. We will turn our economy around with millions of new jobs, and free ourselves from our oil dependency and invest in renewable, alternative energies. As Democrats, we will restore our civil liberties and uphold the civil rights of all. Within the party there are a wide range of views from very conservative to very liberal or progressive. Richard A. Payne is a liberal Democrat. 

Richard A. Payne is best known amongst Colorado Democrats as the guy who co-wrote the resolution to make the donkey or burro the official mascot of the Colorado Democrat Party. He will not rest until it becomes the “official” mascot of the national party as well.

Richard A. Payne is a Yellow Dog Democrats was a term applied to U.S. Southern voters who voted solely for Democratic candidates, with the term commencing in the late 19th century. Due to Republican president Abraham Lincoln's leading the American Union (Northern States) against the American Confederacy (Southern States), these voters would allegedly "vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for any Republican". Currently, the term is now more generally applied to refer to any Democrat who will vote a straight Party ticket under any circumstances. Richard A. Payne is a thinking man, with friends with very different views from his own and he respects that and tries to write stories that people with views different from his own can enjoy without difficulty and that has been proven by those who endorse his stories. 

 Today Richard A. Payne makes his home along the Cache La Poudre River , in the foothills of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. He is the father of three children and grandfather of three grandsons. He lives with his best friend Miss Molly and terrier mix breed dog, who he adores. He has been married three times and has been divorced for the last 21 years.

 Richard A. Payne spends his free time fly fishing and horse back riding in the Colorado Rocky Mountains he so loves. He was born on Election Day and so he always clears his calendar in October & November to work during this time of the year. He says; “it helps assure me a Happy Birthday”!  

New Projects (based even more on Auto-biographical Information) 

This is just one of 77 illustrations painted by Dorothy M. Speiser for this new project, set in modern day Colorado in the Rocky Mountains with all of the beautiful plants and animals that call that area home. It is a love story. It talks about the responsibilities that go along with realizing a dream that comes true. Richard A. Payne has longed dreamed of writing a book for the Chinese people.

 I. The first idea, was a story about a young man that realizes a life long dream. He neglects the dream after it is realized and fails to nurture it and he loses it.  It would be about the magic of man's unique relationship to the animals that he shares the world with. Richard A. Payne would create it in English, Spanish and Chinese. When Richard A. Payne spoke to the illustrator Dorothy M. Speiser about this one I knew I had made another brilliant choice as wildlife art with attention to details of flora and fauna is her true expertise. She produced almost eighty beautiful water-color illustrations of places in the Colorado Mountains where the story is set with some truly magnificent plants and animals designed to teach the reader without the reader even knowing they are learning anything new. This would b their second book together. An autobiography is a story a man writes about himself, and Richard A. Payne has experienced three failed marriages teaching him what happens to man when he fails to nurture a dream finally realized. The piece of art at the top of each page of this website was created just for this story. Currently we are shopping publishers in countries speaking the Chinese language.

 II. The second idea, was a story about little white boy and an elderly black woman, set in the early 1950's. It would be about the magic of friendship. It would be about the magic of a garden. Richard A. Payne would create it in English, Spanish and Arabic. Richard A. Payne again spoke to the illustrated Dorothy M. Speiser and again she came through, and produced almost 50 beautiful water-color paintings of Rick, the flower doctor and Hattie Hart, and the beautiful flower garden somewhere in Neosho Missouri. This would be their third book together. An autobiography is a story a man writes about himself, and Richard A. Payne has experienced gardened all of his life. He loves flowers and this is a fictionalized true story from his early childhood. He decided to give Dorothy M. Speiser actual pictures of him at that young age and have her use them to create the illustrations. Currently we are shopping publishers in countries speaking the Arabic language.

In this book we use actual photos of me to create the illustrations

RAP loves stories about our coming to grips with the "magic" that exists in our everyday lives...if we but dare to see enjoy for what it truly is. 

Other ideas include researching the Texas Navy, a story about children and food, a secret group that is responsible for all of the love in the world. RAP also wants to write more about America's film stars.

All of Richard A. Payne's books and ideas for books are copyrighted protected and all rights to them are reserved.