• Leroy B. Inman has followed a journalistic career all his adult life. Using his journalistic background after retirement he did extensive research into pioneering families who found homes in the West. He also has been long interested in fictional writing.
• Born Dec. 23, 1911, in Walterville, a rural community along the McKenzie River in Lane County, Ore., Inman attended school there and in nearby Springfield where his family moved when he was age 10. He attended the University of Oregon in Eugene.
• After serving in the peace time military in Hawaii, 1937-1940, he worked on weekly and daily newspapers, retiring in 1977 after 30 years with The News-Review in Roseburg, Ore. He and his wife Iris of 57 years have four children, all college educated, eight grandchildren and a great-great grandson.
• Inman has three books to his credit. His first book, Early Days on the McKenzie, pertained largely to four families, all interrelated through marriage, who were first to settle on the upper McKenzie. He expanded his research to cover some basic Oregon history and a history of central Lane County, as portrayed in Beautiful McKenzie.
• Returning to his first literary love, he wrote Mountain Miss, a romantic suspense novel using the high Cascade Mountains as the setting.