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Madarieta has made 'finding McKenna' a labor of love
Jose Madarieta had some time to kill in Boise as he waited to depart for Navy basic training in 1968.
He looked in the newspaper for a movie to see and decided on "The Sand Pebbles."
Towards the end of basic training, Madarieta was granted liberty to leave the naval base to spend 12 hours in the nearby town.
Madarieta ventured into the town and eventually found his way into a local bookstore.
As he looked around the store, one book caught his eye: "The Sand Pebbles." Since he had enjoyed the movie, the book quickly made its way into his hands.
When he read the back cover, he was surprised to learn the author, Richard McKenna, was from Mountain Home.
Madarieta said he felt an immediate kinship with the book, having grown up in Oreana, forty minutes east of Mountain Home.
It was a memory Madarieta didn't forget and would recall later in life as an employee for the local charter and alternative school.
In 1998 he proposed the school to be named in McKenna's honor, knowing little more about him than that he was a writer from Mountain Home.
Madarieta was given 18 days to research McKenna and to determine if there was a reason why the school shouldn't bear his name.
His research led him to James and Louise Crane, McKenna's only living relatives.
The couple supported the school being named after Louise's brother-in-law and Madarieta couldn't find a reason not to do so, so the school board approved Richard McKenna Charter High School.
The Cranes invited Madarieta to their home in North Carolina that summer where he spent two weeks going though their shed looking for pieces of McKenna's life.
He shipped 400 pounds of paper home before he left and carried home two huge suitcases full of details from McKenna's life.
The boxes and suitcases were just the beginning of what is now a major archive and museum of the writer.
Inside the archive, located inside the school, one can trace the steps of arguably the town's most famous former resident.
McKenna was a shy boy who mostly kept to himself in school.
He loved to read so much his mother limited him to two books a week in hopes of encouraging him to make friends with his fellow students.
However, McKenna walked past the library every day on his way to and from school. On his way home he would stop and read from books the librarian had left out for him.
The story goes he read every fiction book in the library at least once before he graduated high school.
Libraries would play a huge role in McKenna's life as he would later marry a librarian from his college.
McKenna didn't enter college until his 22-year Navy career ended.
While in the Navy, McKenna could always be seen with a pencil and a book. He would store books wherever he could aboard ship.
The museum includes a couple of books someone mailed the school that they found on a ship with McKenna's name written inside the cover.
He would read as much as he could about the local customs and cultures of where the ship was headed. Before porting, he would share his finding with his shipmates.
The collection continues to grow every year. Madarieta offers a 90-hour research class once a year to his students. Students pick an aspect of McKenna's life and research it in depth, using the archives of his writing and collection of memorabilia.
McKenna kept a detailed itinerary of his ship during WWII. A few years ago, students used his itinerary to plot the movement of his ship during the war. Then they researched what was going on during the war to determine how McKenna's ship supported war efforts.
McKenna enrolled in college at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill after he retired from the Navy.
It was at the UNC's library that McKenna met his wife, Eva.
He earned straight As and graduated in two and a half years with a degree in English and an emphasis in science.
Science was of great interest to McKenna as he often wrote science fiction.
He won the Nebula award in 1966 and was nominated for a Hugo award in 1967, the genre's two biggest awards.
After graduation, McKenna was heavily recruited by graduate schools but there was only one thing McKenna wanted to do -- write.
He started writing short stories, known as "slicks" back then, for magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post. He also wrote a lot of adventure stories that took place after his characters returned from WWII.
McKenna believed he couldn't compose and type at the same time, so he would write in pencil then type it afterwards. He typed on the back of old letterheads from large corporations he wrote to asking for the letterhead of employees who were no longer with the company.
A large collection of his writing, both handwritten and typed, is housed in the local archive. Madarieta believes the school is the only high school in the country to house a writer's achievements.
The B and C manuscripts for his most famous work, "The Sand Pebbles," are housed in the achieve.
"The Sand Pebbles" was published in eight languages and spent 28 weeks on the New York Times best seller list.
McKenna won the Harper's award for the book in 1963.
The highly prestigious award came with a $10,000 prize. Upon wining the award, McKenna sent a $250 check to the Mountain Home library with the instructions to buy as many children's books as possible.
A couple of the books are on display in the museum (the former library) and some of them are still in circulation at the current library.
Winning the award increased McKenna's profile as a writer a great deal.
He was invited to join the Author's League of America, an invitation-only writer's association whose selection committee included nine Pulitzer Prize winners and two Nobel prize winning authors, John Steinbeck and Pearl Buck.
McKenna's time was in great demand and he was asked to speak at various events.
Someone quickly discovered the only way to ensure McKenna would accept a speaking invitation was if it came from the local women's club.
Women's clubs had stocked the Mountain Home library with books and McKenna felt answering their request was his way of giving back to them. He didn't accept compensation for his speaking engagements.
McKenna was popular enough to appear on game shows such as "To Tell the Truth," "What's my Line?" and "I've Got a Secret."
"The Sand Pebbles" was turned into a movie in 1967, directed by Robert Wise and starring Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Richard Crenna and Candice Bergen.
The movie was nominated for eight Oscars and eight Golden Globes.
The first draft of the screen play and the shooting script signed by the cast are on display in the archive.
"The Sand Pebbles" was McKenna's only published novel. He died from a heart attack in 1964 while working on his second novel.
Since returning from his first visit to North Carolina, Madarieta has worked hard to keep improving the archive. The Crane's sent out more boxes of McKenna's belongings and continue to do so as they find more.
The couple has made several trips to the school and have honorary diplomas and a certificate making them honorary grandparents of the school's students. Each year during the holiday season, the pair buys the students a small present.
Upon returning from North Carolina, Madarieta wrote everyone he knew to be associated with McKenna and asked them to send information or artifacts relating to him. Several people responded, such as the sailor who found his books on a ship, or Bergen, who sent an autographed picture.
Madarieta said he feels blessed the school gets to house McKenna's archive, which is open to the public by appointment only.
The archive is used for research, including a Navy writer who will visit soon, and Mountain Home's history can be seen in letters McKenna wrote as well as in pictures and other items on display.
The archive has other advantages for students of the school as well.
"It gives kids the chance to do original research with someone they can connect with. He was just a kid in Mountain Home like they are," Madarieta said.
Madarieta said he had a student who had given up her dream of writing and didn't realize writers could come from Mountain Home until she saw McKenna's archive.
Madarieta said he was a small part of the team that has filled a particular hole in Mountain Home's history, listing more than a half dozen names of people who helped get the archive started and have contributed to it.
He was also quick to give his students credit for their work and said he hopes one of them will grow up and complete a book of their own on McKenna.
Although he did not return to Mountain Home after retiring from the Navy, his legacy continues to live on in Mountain Home.
Sand Pebble Street is named after the book that made him famous.
McKenna Drive is named after him.
Richard McKenna Charter High School was named in his honor.
A bust of McKenna sits in front of the Mountain Home Museum, the site of the former library where McKenna grew up reading.
May 9, 2008, the 95th anniversary of his birth, will be proclaimed Richard McKenna Day in Mountain Home.