Sanford, John, 1904-2003.

                             John B. Sanford
 

John Sanford, Author and Memoirist, Dies at 98
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
 

John Sanford, a novelist, historian and memoirist who often focused his moral fables on the Adirondacks, died on March 6 in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 98 and lived in Montecito, Calif.

His memoir of his life from 1904 to 1927, "The Color of the Air: Scenes From the Life of an American Jew, Volume I," was published in 1985.

Four more volumes in the autobiographical series followed.

Mr. Sanford's original name was Julian Lawrence Shapiro; he changed it in 1940. He also wrote as Julian L. Shapiro and as John B. Sanford.

His career as a writer was hurt by his membership in the Communist Party and his related blacklisting. He mostly wrote novels until 1975, when he began collections of historical vignettes as well as autobiographical and other works.

In 1982 his novel "A Man Without Shoes," which he had finished in 1947, was finally published. It had been spurned by many publishers over the years, though an edition had been privately printed.

In all, Mr. Sanford published 24 books. He received a PEN award for "The Color of the Air."

A native of Manhattan, he was an alumnus of Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and of Fordham University in New York.

Mr. Sanford married the former Marguerite Roberts, a screenwriter, in 1938. She died in 1989.