Michaela O'Harra

NEW YORK - Michaela O'Harra, a playwright and a resident of Wellfleet, passed away Aug. 17, 2007, in Nyack, N.Y.

Born March 24, 1911, in Lodi, Calif., to Friede Kane Williams and Clyde F. Williams, first-generation Californians, she was sister to Merle Williams Gardner who predeceased her. Her youth was spent in both Lodi and Los Banes, Calif. After producing her first play at age 9 (a stirring three-act, one-page script!) to much acclaim from her parents, she knew her destiny. In 1929 she graduated from Westside Union High School in Los Banos and then college at San Jose State and the University of California.

She first arrived in New York in the 1930s where, after a short return west and time spent in Arizona working as a newspaper reporter, she made her home for over 70 years. By 1940 her first play, ''Manor Bright,” was produced off-Broadway and her long association with New York theater began. She never dreamed when she wrote an impassioned letter to then renowned playwright Howard Lindsay bemoaning the plight of young writers like herself and proposing an ambitious plan to help them that it would be considered. But it was.

And in 1949 with patronage from Mr. Lindsay, Russel Crouse, Moss Hart, and others, New Dramatists was born. It continues today as the country's leading center for support and development of new playwrights having produced 15 Pulitzer-, 14 Tony-, and numerous other award-winners. In 2001 New Dramatists itself received a special Tony award for its countless contributions to American Theater. Ms. O'Harra continued to write throughout her life but her greatest gift remains the contributions to theater she made through the writings of others. Her passion was the written word; her greatest joy, the theater.

She is survived by three nieces, Tina Unti of Madera, Calif., Ellen Mahal of Dos Palos, Calif., Merle Ganong of Mammoth Lakes, Calif., one nephew, Gilbert Gardner of Firebaugh, Calif., their spouses, children and grandchildren.