SNAN Fair To Feature Book Signing By ‘Tyler’s Titanic’ Author Bernard Ryan, Jr

By Kaaren Valenta

Bernard Ryan, Jr, will sign copies of his latest book, Tyler’s Titanic, at the annual Christmas Fair to be held by the Spay & Neuter Association of Newtown on December 6 at Edmond Town Hall.

The charming story for children about a boy, his dog, and their visit to the wreck of H.M.S. Titanic is the 30th book written by Bernie Ryan, an almost octogenarian (he will be 80 on December 2) who lives in Heritage Village with his wife, Jean.

Tyler’s story is one that took Mr Ryan years to write, which is not his usual prolific style. And unlike most of his books – which include fantasy, biography, early childhood education, community service for teens, career guides in the fields of advertising and journalism, courtroom trials, and personal financial planning – this is his first book for children.

“I’d had it in my head for many years,” Mr Ryan said. “I was a Titanic buff. The concept for the book came to me one day while I was at the beach, watching children play.”

Mr Ryan has two daughters, Nora and Barbara Ann, and two grandchildren, Tyler, 15, and Anna, 10, whose names he borrowed to use in his book. The novel tells the story of Tyler, who accompanied by his dogSpoofer, visits the HMS Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic. There he meets many ghosts, those who perished and those who survived but chose to return after death. There are the ghosts of two dogs –– one of whom was rescued when the mighty passenger liner sank –– and crewmembers, including Captain Edward John Smith, who answered questions that have been raised for nearly a century about the disaster.

Bernie Ryan did not plan on a career as a writer. A graduate of Kent School and Princeton University, he originally thought he wanted to be an actor in New York City.

“I used to spend time at the Cliff Self’s Service Bureau at 1541 Broadway, one flight up in the middle of the city,” Mr Ryan said. “It was a place to get mail and other services, and was operated by a man named Cliff Self. One day in 1947 a group of us were talking and one of the other unemployed actors said that ‘in radio, they eat.’”

So Bernie Ryan decided to get a job in radio, first training his voice by reading aloud three or four days a week as a volunteer for Lighthouse for the Blind. Then, at his first job, at radio station WCTC in Newark, N.J., he met the woman who would become his wife when she came to do a program for the Red Feather Drive (a precursor to the United Way).

The couple’s first home was in Buffalo, N.Y., where Bernie Ryan worked for WGR, then for WHAM and WHAM-TV in Rochester, all the while acting in community theater. Eventually he decided he wanted to work in advertising, and he got a job with one of the largest agencies –– Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO) in New York City.

“It was just the most opportune time,” he said. “The coaxial cable linking television across the country had just been constructed. When I joined BBDO’s radio-television group, I was the 14th person. Six months later we had 60 because every client was clamoring to be on TV.”

He was there as a creative supervisor for 15 years, and had started to write a series of books for Harper Brothers (now Harper & Rowe), when he decided to quit so he could stay home and write full-time.

“My brother was an Associated Press reporter and during the New York Times strike we wrote So You Want To Go Into Journalism,” he said. “I also wrote So You Want To Go Into Advertising. Both books had a ten-year run.”

Bernie Ryan then wrote Your Child and The First Year of School in 1961, “because there wasn’t a book at that time that told parents about what happens when their child starts school.” He wrote articles for The New York Times and for more than a dozen magazines including a now-defunct publication called Fairfield County magazine. Then in 1970 he founded an advertising agency, Wilson, Ryan & Leigh, with two partners in Westport.

“We soon had a staff of eight in an office overlooking the Saugatuck River,” he said. “But when the Recession of 1976 hit, we got clobbered.”

Mr Ryan decided to leave the agency and soon took a job as an information officer with the Economic Development Council of New York City, an agency later known as the New York City Partnership. Six years later, he was approached by the American Association of Advertising Agencies to become its senior vice president for public affairs. He spent eight years with AAAA before retiring in 1990.

But all during that time, he was still writing books. He ghostwrote a series of six personal finance books with financial planner Elizabeth Lewin from 1983 to 1997, produced condensations of more than two dozen business books for Southview Summaries’ subscription series, and wrote a series of eight books for teenagers on voluntary community service.

Years earlier he had written a book, The Poisoned Life of Mrs Maybrick. The biography of an American woman who, in Liverpool, England, in 1889, was not only the principal in one of history’s great murder trials but (according to recent research by experts) was probably the wife of Jack the Ripper. The book was eventually published in England, and was one of the first books published by iUniverse, an independent on-demand publisher, before it became a vanity press.

That led to his work on a series of books about trials –– Great American Trials, Great World Trials and Sex, Sin And Mayhem: Trials of the Nineties. The last book was published just three weeks after the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial, a feat that was possible because Mr Ryan wrote about the trial as it progressed.

A great aviation buff who years ago liked to hang around airports and watch the planes land and take off, he wrote The Wright Brothers: Inventors of the Airplane, which was published this year by Scholastic Incorporated’s Franklin Watts imprint in its Great Life Stories series. Condoleezza Rice: Educator and National Security Advisor, is scheduled for publication soon, and Hillary Rodham Clinton: Lawyer, First Lady, and Senator is in production for publication early next year. The career biographies are aimed at high school-age youth.

“I am now working on a book about cosmologist Stephen Hawking and am about to get a contract for three more books,” he said.

A resident of Wilton for more than 33 years, he and his wife have been living in Heritage Village for the past ten years. He will be signing books at the SNAN fair from 10 am to noon. Books will be available to purchase; Tyler’s Titanic, 104 pages, $8.95, is published by RDR Books and is ideal for children ages 7 to 10.

The fair will take place from 9 am to 2 pm. It will includes antiques and collectibles, Native American crafts, a tag sale, bake sale, jewelry, linens and china, stamp art and supplies, Christmas gifts and crafts, candles, Mary Kay cosmetics, a raffle table with gift certificates from local supermarkets and a fresh cut tree from a local nursery, and a food court. The fair will take place in the lower meeting room and lower courtroom at Edmond Town Hall.