Richard Brautigan
Almost no one knows that the poet Richard Brautigan grew up in Oregon. Before he moved to San Francisco and became the nationally known author of such works as “In Watermelon Sugar” and “Trout Fishing in America,” Brautigan grew up with a blue collar mother in Eugene and graduated from Eugene High School, which is now South Eugene High School.
Brautigan’s last novel, “So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away,” is based in part on a 1948 hunting accident that killed a 14-year-old boy in Eugene. Brautigan’s daughter, Ianthe, later helped turn the book into a movie. (She is on the left in the photo above, taken in Eugene.)Â Brautigan shot and killed himself in 1984.