Anton Myrer

Anton Olmstead Myrer (November 3, 1922–January 19, 1996) was an American author, known best for writing the historical fiction military novel Once An Eagle (1968).

Early years and military service
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, on November 3, 1922, to Raymond Lewis and Angele E. Myrer, he grew up in Boston, graduating from Boston Latin High School in 1940. He prepared at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire before entering Harvard College in September 1941 with the Class of 1945. His studies were interrupted, however, after the December 7, 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor. Soon after the attack, he, like many of his college peers, sought to enroll in the Army Reserve but was rejected. In 1942, he enlisted and was accepted by the United States Marine Corps. He participated in the Battle of Guam and the occupation of the remaining Mariana Islands afterwards. He was wounded in Guam and was promoted to the rank of corporal before being discharged in 1946.

Education, marriage, and writing
He returned to Harvard and graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. two years after his original classmates in May 1947.

In August 1947, he married artist Judith Rothschild and relocated to California. Random House published his first novel Evil Under the Sun in 1951. To support his family, he continued to work a number of low-paying, unskilled jobs. In 1957, his novel The Big War, published by Appleton-Century-Crofts, was financially and critically successful, resulting in the 1958 film screenplay he wrote with Edward Anhalt re-titled In Love and War, starring Robert Wagner and Bradford Dillman.

In 1960, the Myrers moved back to the Northeast to a country home in Saugerties, NY, and a summer home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Little, Brown published The Violent Shore (1962) and The Intruder (1965).

Myrer’s most successful novel, Once An Eagle, was published in 1968 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, during the Vietnam War.

He separated from his wife and divorced her in 1970. Soon afterward he married Patricia Schartle (May 21, 1923-June 26, 2010).

He wrote three more novels: The Tiger Waits (1973 published by Norton); The Last Convertible (1978 published by Putnam); and A Green Desire in (1981 also published by Putnam).

Anton Myrer died on January 19, 1996, of leukemia, at the age of 73. He was survived by his widow.