Boots LeBaron is an award-winning writer, essayist and poet. Born in Hollywood, Calif., he was raised by a single-parent mother (Thelma) and the Hall-of-Fame stuntman father (Bert) she divorced twice. His first newspaper job was working as a copyboy for the Los Angeles Times. Eventually he was promoted to staff writer in the newspaper's fledgling TV department. He quit that job to join the police beat covering crime working out of LAPD's Parker Center. In 1962 he left The Times to promote the Seattle World's Fair. As a writer-publicist, he handled the 1964 kickoff for the Beatles first concert tour in the U.S. For the California State Park Commission he created five slogans including "Give A Hoot, Don't Pollute!" He publicized the new Universal City Studio tour center, handled a variety of TV series and movies, represented Henry Mancini, The Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey Circus, The Chrysler Corp., Caesars Palace, Circus-Circus casino, and introduced the nation's first computerized supermarket. A former child actor, Boots has spent the past 30 years as a freelance writer publishing about 2,000 human-interest stories and essays in newspapers and magazines. During that time, he won a Writer's Digest award and was nominated three times for a Pulitzer Prize. His most memorable reporting job was working on the police-beat at LAPD's Parker Center. "Covering crime before the Miranda Act," he said, "working with a bunch of journalistic dinosaurs from five daily newspapers was an adventure I will forever cherish. " The Daily Breeze, a Los Angeles Copley newspaper, published more than 840 of his freelance human-interest articles. In his early 80s, he is still publishing and even illustrating his prose. Married for more than 50 years, he and his wife JoAnne have three grown children and four grandchildren