Obituary:

Donald Franklin Albright, 87, passed away peacefully at his home in Westfield, New Jersey, in the loving care of his wife of 52 years, Michelle Nahum-Albright and his daughter, Elizabeth Nahum-Albright.

Donn, as he was known, was born in Muncie, Indiana and was raised there by his parents, Alvin Albright and Florence Wilson Albright. His father was a junior high school shop teacher who, with the help of other teachers in town, built the house in Muncie where Donn grew up. Donn had no siblings, but he was able to make many friends at Burris School on the Ball State University campus, which he attended from kindergarten through high school.

Beginning in 1949, at the age of 12, he and his parents would spend many summers in southern California, and they eventually traveled through almost every state in the American West. These sights, and the California cities along Route 66, captured his imagination. California, specifically Los Angeles, was where science fiction and fantasy writer Ray Bradbury lived, a writer who became the abiding focus of Donn’s reading life. This focus started in 1950 on a stormy night back home in Muncie, when Donn listened to a radio dramatization of Ray Bradbury’s classic suspense tale, “Mars Is Heaven!”

Donn began a lifelong correspondence with Bradbury that same year and spent the rest of his life determined to collect all of Bradbury’s wide-ranging work in literature, film, and television. He had excelled in art during his high school years at Burris, and in 1955 he began studies at the California Art Center in Los Angeles, still collecting Bradbury’s work and seeing every film or television show adapted from Bradbury’s stories. To pay for school, he worked part-time at a drug store on the west side of Los Angeles. In this job, he occasionally served some of the Hollywood actors that he would see on big screen. All the while, he kept writing to Ray Bradbury, who occasionally sent him manuscripts and memorabilia for his ever-growing collection.

During his years at Art Center, Donn met and sometimes studied under some of the major Hollywood studio-era artists. In 1961 he left Los Angeles for New York, and he began to illustrate for magazines and other publications. He also began teaching illustration at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Manhattan, where his colleagues included some of the prominent major illustrators of the day. Donn soon became a full-time instructor at Pratt, and spent 53 years on the faculty, much of that time as a tenured professor.

He was becoming known as a major collector of Bradbury’s work, and he had already developed a long-distance friendship that few other Bradbury collectors or scholars could claim. In 1977 Bradbury invited Donn to his home and office in Los Angeles, and for the next 35 years—the rest of Ray Bradbury’s long life—Donn would travel to visit Bradbury two or three times a year. He would become Bradbury’s principal bibliographer, helping the iconic author maintain order for an ever-increasing number of creative projects in literature, stage, and film, as well as the mementos and projects related to Bradbury’s lasting role as a spokesperson and celebrant for the Space Age.

As the decades passed, Bradbury relied on Donn to re-discover many of the old unpublished or incomplete stories languishing in his basement office and elsewhere in his home—stories that, in many cases, Bradbury had long forgotten. In this way, Donn influenced the content selections for the many story collections that Bradbury published with the major publishing houses from the 1980s to the end of his life in 2012. Donn also turned his talents as an accomplished illustrator and designer to creating more than a dozen limited-press Bradbury collections that showcased previously unpublished stories, film scripts, and poems.

Many people from the complex world of Ray Bradbury began to rely on Donn and consult with him, including Ray’s agents, his Hollywood friends, and other writers influenced by Bradbury. Donn was a friend to many Bradbury fans and researchers, and he helped quite a few of them find their way through the fascinating creative jungle that was Ray Bradbury’s cultural legacy.

Above all, Donn Albright was a man of character and unwavering loyalty. He was never afraid to speak out against a wrong, and he was always quick to point out the good qualities of anyone, even if they irritated or frustrated him. He would do great kindnesses and was charitable to others—characteristics not always found in those who are passionate and thorough collectors. Many people called him a friend, and many people will miss him, his wisdom, and his abiding sense of humor.

Donn is survived by his wife Michelle and his daughter Elizabeth, who are both graduates of the Pratt Institute, where Donn taught for more than half a century. Throughout his life, Donn’s loving heart remained in tune with the heart of that little boy who grew up in Muncie, Indiana, in the little house that still stands there today, containing the memories of a childhood well-loved and the now-fulfilled promise of a life well-lived.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations in Donn's memory be directed to the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University. Indianapolis, Indiana.

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