MKA Distinguished Alum and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Philip Fradkin dies age 77

It is with great sadness that MKA learned of the death of Philip Fradkin, Montclair Academy Class of 1953.  Fradkin, who died of cancer on Sunday, July 8, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, the 1989 MKA Distinguished Alumni Award recipient and an active member of the MKA alumni community. attending area receptions and most recently, being a contributor to the MKA Spring 2012 Review magazine.

As a young L.A. Times reporter, Philip Fradkin shared a Pulitzer Prize as the first journalist to cover Watts from the inside during the 1965 riots. One of the earliest environmental reporters, his 1981 book, A River No More, marked the first time a layman documented the thesis that the over-allocated Colorado River would eventually run out of water. It was followed by books about subjects as various as the Nevada Test Site’s downwinders, earthquakes, California's changing demographics, the well-received biography Wallace Stegner and the American West, and most recently, his 13th book, another biography, Everett Ruess: His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing Afterlife.

MKA extends deepest condolences to Phil's wife, Diane and children, Cleo Cavolo and Alex Fradkin.

Click here to read the New York Times obituary.

Click here to read Fradkin's contribution to the Spring 2012 Review magazine.