Richard S. Rose

Dick Rose was born in Chicago, IL on August 16, 1931. He attended school in Chicago through the tenth grade before moving to Los Angeles, CA in 1947. He finished high school in 1949 and graduated from Los Angeles City College on June 14, 1951, one day before entering the Navy.

Rose had a long career in the Navy as a journalist and following his retirement as a Master Chief Journalist in 1971, he entered San Diego State University, earning a BA with honors in English in 1972, and an MA in 1975. While in school, he realized that he had to tell his story, his view as a participant, as a disillusioned career navy man.



The story became his Masters Thesis, Tarnished Brass Curtain, a novel about the Vietnam experience. In it, he was able to dramatize the contradictions and doubts faced by a dedicated and loyal Navy man. It also allowed him to explore alienation, the outside status he had always felt as a Jewish second generation American in what he saw as WASP-oriented society.

Though he has had many news stories and feature articles published in military and civilian newspapers and magazines, and wrote an award-winning radio drama in 1966 saluting the Hungarian Freedom Fighter, he remains focused on Vietnam. He was active in Vietnam Veterans of America, where he served in various chapter offices, and edited a newsletter, Frontlines. He was also a contributing editor to the VVA California State newspaper, The California Zephyr.

Throughout his post-Navy career, he wrote humorous newspaper columns for various VA and community newspapers, under the title Through Rose-colored Glasses.