Charles E. van Loan

Biography

Charles Emmett van Loan entered the world on 29 June 1876 in San Jose, California, to the sound of Salvation Army tambourines: his father commanded the local corps, his mother marched beside him, and little Charles kept the beat on a snare drum through the streets of San Bernardino. At the Los Angeles Morning Herald he swapped drumsticks for a pencil, then moved to the Examiner, sharpening sentences the way other boys whittled sticks. Eastward ambition carried him to New York, where the Evening Journal and the American let him turn ballgames into literature; when he finally stepped away from the press box he kicked the job—boots, cigar, and press pass—straight to his pal Damon Runyon. Magazine editors soon discovered that readers would elbow each other for anything carrying the Van Loan byline. Between 1911 and 1919 the Saturday Evening Post paraded a parade of his diamond-dust fables: “The Bonehead,” “The Ten-Thousand Dollar Arm,” and “Art and the Dollar” sent mail sacks bulging to the Post’s offices and made the Philadelphia Public Ledger crown him the king of male magazine fiction. A 1914 car crash shattered his left arm; five years later, on 2 March 1919, chronic nephritis closed his account in Abington, Pennsylvania, while he was chasing one last assignment. He left behind Emma C. Lenz, his wife since 1900, daughter Virginia, son Richard—and a father who, on hearing the news, clutched his chest and followed his boy into the dark within hours.