William Herrick
January 10, 1915 - January 31, 2004

MEMORIAL SERVICE (non-religious) Saturday, February 28, 2004 at 2:00 p.m. Wesley United Methodist Church (Synagogue at Malden Bridge) Malden Bridge, New York Further info and directions email Lisa at [email protected]

April 21, 1998 (Tuesday) at 8:00 p.m.
Assembly Hall, Campus Center
UAlbany, Uptown Campus

William Herrick was born in Trenton, NJ, in 1915. His parents had emigrated from what is now known as Belarus. He was educated in the public schools of Trenton and then New York City. He was graduated from high school in June 1932 and did not go to college. Instead he worked as an errand boy, went on the bum, worked in an Anarchist commune in Michigan, was a busboy in East Side of NYC cabarets, also in a hotel in Miami Beach, and while there helped a Communist Party organizer organize Negro sharecroppers in southern Georgia. When he returned to New York City he worked in the fur trade and helped organize a section of the trade for the Furriers Union. In November 1936 he volunteered to fight with what became the Abraham Lincoln battalion.(Please note: not brigade, there was no Lincoln brigade in Spain; it was a battalion!) He was wounded on February 23, 1937 on the Madrid front. He returned to the US in the fall of 1937 and worked for the Communist-led Furriers Union. He broke with Communist Party and was fired by the union in November 1939. He became a verbatim court reporter and worked as a freelancer. He helped organized the Federation of Shorthand Reporters and was its president for a number of years. He then worked as an official court reporter for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District, beginning in 1956 and began in the evenings to write fiction. In 1966 his first novel was published in both England and the United States. In 1969, at the publication of his third novel, he resigned from the court and began writing full time. He has now published ten novels and Jumping the Line: The Adventures and Misadventures of an American Radical (1998) is a memoir of his time served in the great battles of our century--for workers' rights, against Fascism, Communism, and racism. Herrick has written book reviews for the NY Times Book Review and for The New Leader.