Gary Robert Pinnell

Gary Robert Pinnell (1952-) was born at Balboa Naval Base in Oceanside, CA. As Marine brat, he began criss-crossing the nation from Hawaii to Oklahoma. At 15, he ran away from home and hitchhiked to Palo Alto, CA to find his daddy. From age 13, he worked a variety of jobs in restaurants, clothing stores, climbing wooden water towers to replace rotten boards, and shoveling oil from the bottom of grease pits. At age 32, he finished a bachelor's degree in political science at the University of Oklahoma. Off and on for 35 years, he reported for or edited 13 newspapers in Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and retired in Florida in 2017. In 2020, during the COVID-19 crisis, he completed To Daddy, Who I Never Loved, which won historic novel awards from the Florida Writers Association and the Oklahoma Writers Federation.