Encinitas, Calif. -- William Wharton, a painter who became a novelist in his 50s and won an American Book Award, has died, his wife said. . He was 82.
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Wharton died Wednesday at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas, Calif., the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.
At 53, Wharton, a Philadelphia native, was living as an artist in Paris under his birth name, Albert du Aime, when his first novel, "Birdy," was published by Knopf in 1979. The book won an American Book Award and was a Pulitzer Prize runner-up for fiction.
Wharton was born Nov. 7, 1925, into what he told London's Guardian newspaper was "a very poor, hard-working, uneducated Catholic family."
He volunteered for the Army at 17 during World War II. While serving in the 87th Infantry Division, he was wounded during the Battle of the Bulge. He went on to earn an art degree from UCLA, where he received a doctorate in psychology in 1960.
He taught art in Los Angeles city schools for 11 years before packing up and moving his family to Europe in 1960.
Wharton is survived by his wife Rosemary, three children and one great-grandchild.
Copyright 2008 by United Press International.
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