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Robert Ormond Case was a well-known Oregon author and a prominent, long-time resident of Portland. He was born in Dallas, Texas in 1895 and moved to Portland as a boy. He graduated from Tualatin Academy in Forest Grove, Oregon and went on to attend the University of Oregon.
In 1917, while a sophomore at the University, Case enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served 22 months with the 65th Artillery, CAC, including 52 consecutive days at the front. Case returned to U.O. and received a B.A. in 1920. During his years at the university he was a member of the Delta Tau Delta social fraternity, Sigma Delta Chi honorary journalistic society, and Sigma Upsilon honorary fiction society. In addition he was a member of the Cross-Roads philosophical society and founder of a campus humor magazine.
After his graduation from the University of Oregon. Case went to work as a reporter for the Portland Morning Oregonian. In 1921 he served as financial editor. From 1922 to 1925 he was involved in the Oregon State Chamber of Commerce. His career as a free-lance writer began in 1926 and soon thereafter published his first western, historically-inspired stories. He is best remembered as a writer of western stories, his most well-known dating from the 1930s through the 1950s. He wrote fourteen books and over 200 novelettes. In 1944 he received a Peabody award for the radio scripts of Song of Columbia. Most of Case's serials and short stories were written for national magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's and Country Gentleman.
Case spent most of his mature life in Portland, Oregon with periods of residency in New York and California. In Portland he was a member of the school board as well as the City Club and the Rotarians. He was a prominent member of the state Republican Party, particularly as a leader of the Conservative wing during the time of Wayne Morse. He spent the final years of his life in Oakland, California, where he died on 27 March 1964.
The Robert Ormond Case papers include correspondence, documents, literary manuscripts and published works. Of particular value to the researcher is the quantity of both professional and personal correspondence from much of his mature life, and documents pertaining to his career, private life and health. These include letters to and from family and friends, correspondence to and from his agents and lawyers, and communications with publishers. Also included are documents and correspondence pertaining to his divorce from his first wife and papers dealing with persistent medical problems during the last years of his life. There is unfortunately very little material dealing with the author's youth and education directly. One searching for information on his years at the University of Oregon would have to rely on very few incidental recollections in papers of much later years. The majority of the materials date from the mid-1930s on, with most of the family correspondence dating from the 1950s to the end of Case's life.