Ronald B. Taylor Jr., 1930-2015: Author of book on Cesar Chavez, former Fresno Bee reporter dies

Ronald Bluford Taylor Jr.’s life reads like a Wild West novel that if he’d written would have added a colorful end note to a long bibliography of stories penned in a 60-year writing career.

The grandson of the first Sierra Nevada forest ranger and great-grandson of an original co-settler of modern-day Oakhurst, Mr. Taylor rode saddle broncs in college and became a journalist who helped a mortally wounded small-town Washington sheriff capture his young shooter.

His newspaper career brought him to The Fresno Bee and the Los Angeles Times. A four-time Pulitzer Prize nominee for investigative journalism, he would entertain Cesar Chavez at his dinner table in Visalia and write a highly acclaimed book about the farm labor leader, follow child laborers in the fields and inspire legislative land reform in California.

Many of the stories captured in newsprint during his 23 years reporting for The Bee from 1955 to 1978 focused on agriculture, farmworkers, child labor, the rural poor, land use and the environment. But he couldn’t resist adventure, including a flight in a fighter jet out of Lemoore Naval Air Station for a story.

He left The Bee in 1978 to be a special assignment reporter at the Los Angeles Times, with a beat that allowed him to travel throughout California. He did several significant stories there, including a series on pesticide use in agriculture that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, said son Matthew Taylor.

Mr. Taylor died Sept. 13 of congestive heart failure and Parkinson’s disease at his home in Walnut Creek, his son said. He was 85.

Over the course of his writing career, Mr. Taylor authored two novels and three nonfiction books. His novel, “Long Road Home,” was made into a TV movie of the same name in 1991 starring Mark Harmon. He wrote numerous magazine articles as a freelance writer through the years.

In fact, Mr. Taylor never stopped writing. He refused to give it up. Doctors gave him a choice of treating his congestive heart failure, but he turned down the treatment because it would have left him bedridden with Parkinson’s, his son said. He told his doctor: “I just want to write, and I have to sit up to write. I just want to write as fast as I can.”

At the time of his death, he was writing a revision to “Chavez and the Farm Workers,” a book published in 1975. The book resonates today, as the 50th anniversary of the Delano Grape Strike will be marked on Saturday.

As a young boy, Matthew Taylor remembers Chavez coming to the family home in Visalia. “I didn’t know who this man was, but I knew we weren’t allowed to eat grapes during the boycott.”

“Chavez and the Farm Workers” drew praise from The New York Times, which said it was “really a book about power – about what the author sees as the political power of corporate agriculture; about the unscrupulous use of power by the giant International Brotherhood of Teamsters to steal contracts from the United Farm Workers, and finally, about how Chavez and his associates have sought to acquire collective power for the fieldworkers of California and the Southwest so that they would be in a strong enough position to demand adequate wages and a minimally decent standard of living.”

Mr. Taylor was proud of the Chavez book, Matthew Taylor said. “He felt like he actually got it right.” Other books on Chavez he considered “more odes” to the farm labor leader. He felt his book was a more accurate picture of Chavez and the whole movement, his son said.

Mr. Taylor “always had a sense of social justice,” said Deanne Wylie, a retired reporter who worked with Mr. Taylor at both The Bee and the Times.

As a young reporter, Fresno Bee Executive Editor Jim Boren worked alongside Mr. Taylor. Boren said he remembers a reporter who “had a commanding presence, with his booming voice and a reporting style that quickly got to the facts.”

The book on Chavez “was one of the first that got to the heart of this charismatic farm labor leader,” Boren said. “Ron was looked to nationally as an expert on the farm labor movement. He also understood how poverty impacted the lives of Valley families.”

Mr. Taylor also “spoke for the thousands of children working on farms” in his 1973 book, “Sweatshops in the Sun,” Boren said. “Children of farmworkers are in school today because Ron dared to challenge an economic system that considered child labor part of the business model.”

In 1970, Mr. Taylor wrote a series for The Bee on land conservation, entitled “Subdividing The Wilderness. “His work at The Bee changed California law, as he exposed get-rich-schemes by land developers and the exploitation of children working on farms,” Boren said.

Mr. Taylor acquired a love for the land early.

As a little boy, he and his brother would ride with their father, who drove a horse-drawn ice cream wagon in Yosemite Valley. Their father was a lineman for the electric company at the time, San Joaquin Light and Power, but had broken his legs on the job and drove the wagon while he recovered.

But shortly after Ronald Bluford Taylor Sr. returned to work at the electric company, he was electrocuted, Matthew Taylor said. Mr. Taylor was 5. He and his brother lived for a time with grandparents in Oakhurst. And it was from his grandfather, William Boot Taylor, the first Sierra forest ranger, that Mr. Taylor learned about horses. Mr. Taylor’s great-grandfather, William Bluford Taylor, was an original co-settler of Fresno Flats before it became Oakhurst in 1912. The Taylor Log House today is part of the Fresno Flats Historic Village and Park.

Mr. Taylor’s familiarity with horses would hold him in good stead years later as a college student on the rodeo team.

Mr. Taylor stood 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 210 pounds only the few times he was skinny, his son said. He had been recruited to play offensive tackle for the Washington State College football team. He graduated from Fresno High School in 1948. His dad might have had a future in football, but the coach kicked him off the team when he found out that he had joined the rodeo team, Matthew Taylor said.

Rodeoing, however, indirectly led to his newspaper career.

At the end of his senior year, he wanted the college newspaper to write a story about the rodeo team, Matthew Taylor said. He was told the paper would print a story if he wrote it. He didn’t know how to type, so he penned the story in longhand. He sent a copy of the story to Western Horseman, and the magazine printed it.

The writing bug had bitten. He saved up $20 to buy a used typewriter, most likely an Underwood, his son said. He went into the fraternity basement and taught himself how to type. He would earn a certificate in journalism.

In his last year of college, he became engaged to Dorothy Haight. The two celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary on June 11.

Matthew Taylor said his father had stories to tell from his newspaper career, including a hair-raising one that involved riding with a sheriff on his first job as a reporter at the Columbia Basin News in Pasco, Wash., where he worked from 1954-55.

His father told him that he and the sheriff had responded to a call of a young teenager threatening to shoot himself and other people. When the reporter and lawman arrived, the boy’s mother was hiding behind a car. As Mr. Taylor recounted to his son: “The sheriff got his gun out, but said, ‘I can’t shoot this boy.’ ” The sheriff stood up, and the boy shot him.”

Mr. Taylor and the wounded sheriff tracked down the boy and captured him, Matthew Taylor said. “There’s a photograph of the two holding the boy and the mother holding the gun.”

The sheriff died later. Mr. Taylor told his son, “That was “wild, old journalism.”

His father also was “a wild one.” He joined the U.S. Army under a program that then helped pay for college if someone enlisted for a year and stayed in the reserves for six years. He narrowly missed going to Korea, and used to love to tell stories about his Army duty. He drove a tank that had a bulldozer blade. He liked to bulldoze trees, his son said. “He said if you hit fast, they didn’t bend over, they popped up in the air.”

His father also joined the Air Force Reserves and U.S. Coast Guard Reserves – at the same time he was in the Army Reserves – until the Air Force honorably discharged him and the Coast Guard requested he leave, his son said.

Mr. Taylor also had a knack for getting his employers to pay for activities, and readers reaped the awards in his sharing of the experiences. When he wanted to fly in a jet, for example, he persuaded The Bee to let him fly on a fighter jet out of Lemoore. Somehow, he got to be in the front cockpit seat, Matthew Taylor said.

And when Walt Disney wanted to build a ski resort in Mineral King in the late 1960s, Mr. Taylor, who liked to ski, finagled to write the stories so he could ride in the helicopter with the great skiers of the time and ski in the backcountry.

His father, boisterous, larger than life, a passionate fighter against injustice: All in all, Matthew Taylor said, he had a life that “was brightly colored, and it was full, and for the most part joyous.”

This story was originally published September 24, 2015 at 6:34 PM with the headline "Ronald B. Taylor Jr., 1930-2015: Author of book on Cesar Chavez, former Fresno Bee reporter dies."