Courtenay Wright, dead at 95, was the man and muse behind Sara Paretsky’s famous private eye

Nov. 27--You would see him often at literary events around town, a distinguished figure patiently listening to what was often a parade of writers prattle on about their work. But whenever bestselling writer Sara Paretsky began to speak, his eyes would brighten and his smile would appear.

His name was Courtenay Wright and he was Paretsky's husband, had been for more than 40 years, meeting long before Paretsky wrote her first book and became famous.

"I don't think my career would ever have happened without the support that he lavished on me," she said.

Wright died on Thanksgiving morning at the age of 95. Suffering a variety of ailments, he was in hospice care at Rush Medical Center. Only a few weeks before, he had celebrated his birthday at an event that also marked the publication of Paretsky's 21st book, the 19th to feature her genre-busting female private eye, V.I. Warshawski. It is titled "Shell Game."

At that party, his wife said some lovely things about her husband, all of which can be read at saraparetsky.com/blog. Here is some of it, "[Courtenay] taught me to love dogs, to use chopsticks. ... He gave me the courage to find a public voice, in writing and in speaking."

It is never easy to be married to a celebrated person. The spotlight's glare can prove dangerously seductive or simply dangerous. But Wright, whose own life story could have made for a pretty good novel, was happy to share and delight in his wife's success.

He was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, one of the three children of English parents. Following high school, he attended the University of British Colombia as a physics major until his academic career until he volunteered to serve in the Canadian Navy in 1943.

Assigned to the cruiser HMS Apollo as a radar officer, he served in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Pacific. He was the officer on duty, and hence one of the first people to be aware, when the coded signal came in with details of D-Day. He translated it and sent it to the head of the fleet and later was next to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower when his ship transported them to the beaches of Normandy on the day after D-Day.

At war's end, he returned to school, earning a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the University of California, Berkley, where he studied under J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.

In 1949, he accepted a teaching position at the University of Chicago and joined its prestigious physics department faculty, headed by Enrico Fermi. He moved to Chicago with his wife, a bacteriologist named Jean and became a U.S. citizen. Their three boys born (Kimball, Timothy and Philip) were born here and the family settled into a comfortable Hyde Park life.

But Jean began to suffer the miseries of mental illness and much of Wright's time over 10 years was devoted to caring for her and tending to the young boys. After Jean's death, along came Sara.

A native of Kansas, Paretsky was then working for a local insurance company and considering a Ph.D. in history. They met at a Chinese restaurant and were married in 1976.

As Paretsky has written, "I was attracted by his accent and his eyebrows -- both reminiscent of the young Sean Connery, on whom I had a crush. But what made me fall in love was the way his face, indeed, his whole being, lit up when he was doing the work he loved. Physics was his passion. His zest for that world, those ways of thinking, was exhilarating."

The couple -- Paretsky was 29, Wright 52 -- dove into active domesticity, ever including one of a series of golden retrievers. "We also I had my husband's three sons living with us. I was the house manager," she said.

But she was also writing, as she had since childhood, and in 1982 published her first, "Indemnity Only," which focused on an insurance swindle. Her second novel, "Deadlock," came two years later and was set in the Great Lakes shipping industry.

"I really wrote it for Courtenay, the ex-naval officer," she told a magazine in 2001. "He was still in love with ships and shipping and we used to drive up to Sault Ste. Marie a lot and watch the ships go through the locks. One day he was standing there and he said, 'I wonder what would happen if you blew up one of these things in the locks.' So I wrote a whole book for him on why someone would want to do it."

After her third novel, 1985's "Killing Orders," Paretsky left the insurance business and became a full time writer. The books kept coming. Awards and accolades too. Lee Child has called her "a genius" and her fame is international.

She gives great credit to her husband, her first reader, though he didn't see it quite the same way, telling People magazine in 1990, "I just pour champagne on the troubled page. ... Any criticism is immediately regarded as inflicting serious bodily harm on her; she will attack me with a hatchet when I want to change a comma."

Until arthritis stiffened his joints, he was an avid tennis player, downhill skier and sailor. "He really enjoyed taking the boat out when Lake Michigan waves were 6 feet high or higher. In the face of physical danger, his face lit with joy," said Paretsky.

Even after he retired from the classroom in 1993, he remained active in causes and world affairs, as had long been his way. During the Vietnam War, he was a member of a group of scientists known as the Jasons, who persuasively argued against the use of nuclear weapons in the conflict. He often spoke in public forums and on television in support of abortion rights in the years before the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

Wright died peacefully, with Paretsky holding him and singing to him in his hospice bed. In addition to his wife and sons, Wright is survived by a grandchild. A memorial service at the University of Chicago is being planned for some time in the spring.

rkogan@chicagotribune.com

@rickkogan

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