Archives West Finding Aid

David Lane Wright was born on May 22, 1929, in Bennington, Idaho to Conover and Lenora Rich Wright. He was a descendent of LDS Apostle Charles C. Rich. He spent his childhood in Bennington where he began journaling at a young age. He loved sports, especially baseball and football, and enjoyed exploring the terrain around Bennington and Montpelier which figures prominently in his work. When he was seven, his brother Rich, to whom he had been very close, died from an acute appendicitis and this event continued to influence David for the rest of his life; the character of his brother often appeared under different names in many of his writings. His most prominent piece, a play first produced in 1956, Still the Mountain Wind, was about Rich's death.

Wright started attending Utah State University, (then called Utah State Agricultural College), in 1946 at the age of seventeen on an athletic scholarship. He studied English under the tutelage of Professors A. N. Sorensen and Ira Hayward, both of whom encouraged him to write and publish. He was also a sports writer for the student paper. Throughout his life, his dream was to become a writer, but he also prepared to become an English teacher. For the first three years at college, he was on the track team and played football. His final year he quit football to spend more time writing.

After graduation Wright held many jobs as a teacher throughout Idaho. On October 22, 1950 he married Nancy Johnson, one of his students from Rexburg. He changed positions several times and eventually ended up back in his home town working at the elementary school. He later entered active duty in the Air Force and continued write, winning several Air Force story contests and producing his work, Still the Mountain Wind. During this time, he was stationed in various places throughout the United States and the world including South Dakota, Florida, Alabama, and Iceland.

In 1963, Wright was able to pursue his Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Iowa while still in the Air Force, which he completed in 1964. While stationed in Alabama, he became involved in the civil rights campaign. In 1965, Wright was sent to Saigon, Vietnam. There he performed mostly administrative and diplomatic duties, earning a Bronze Star and was promoted to rank of Major. When he returned from Vietnam in December, 1966, he and Nancy divorced and Wright maintained custody of the children.

In February of 1967, he suffered a heart attack. He recovered somewhat and was able to return to his home in Montgomery, Alabama where he lived for the next four months. On June 26, 1967, he suffered a second heart attack and passed away at the age of thirty-eight. (Source: Utah State University's David Lane Wright Papers)

Nancy Claire Johnson was born August 20, 1934, in Archer, Idaho, to Carl John and Geraldine Blackburn Johnson. She attended Rexburg schools and married her high school English teacher, David Lane Wright, in October 1950. After Wright's Death in 1967, she married Victor Centro in 1977 and lived in Carson City for 26 years. On June 8, 2004, she died in Idaho Falls, Idaho of pneumonia at the age of sixty-nine.