Richard Wentworth

Richard Wentworth Champaign - Richard Leigh Wentworth was born in Concord, N.H., on July 6, 1930, the first son of Leigh M. Wentworth and Yvonne R. Wilcott, and died on Monday, Nov. 3, 2025. He was preceded in death by his brother Leigh Jr., who was killed in Korea at age 19, and his brother Thomas, who died at age 60. He is survived by his wife, Marlene (McClenning), whom he married on June 9, 1950, in Rapid City, S.D. His legacy includes four children, 12 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. One of his regrets was that he did not spend enough time with his kids when they were growing up, and he attempted to partially make up for that in his retirement years. After graduating from Concord High School in 1948, he served four years in the U.S. Air Force as a radar technician, reaching the rank of technical sergeant. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma, having served as editor of the student newspaper, in 1956. After a year in graduate school, he received a fellowship in book publishing at the University of Oklahoma Press. Six years later, after a short stop at the University of Wisconsin Press, he was appointed director of the Louisiana State University Press, a leading publisher of Southern and Civil War history. He joined the University of Illinois Press in 1970 as associate director and editor and became director in 1978. At Illinois, he initiated and developed series in labor and working-class history, African-American history, women's history, immigration history and American music, as well as programs in poetry and short fiction. He published four books that won the Bancroft Award for one of the two best books of the year in American history, three of them dealing with race relations and civil rights in the South. When he retired in 2000, a program honoring his career was held at a meeting of the Southern Historical Association, with panelists including leading scholars in African-American history, labor history, women's history and American music. He was addicted to sports but participated much more as a spectator than as a performer. In the middle of Red Sox country, he latched on to the Dodgers at age 14 and stuck with them until the end. He was fortunate to be an assistant in the sports publicity department during Oklahoma's 47-game winning streak in football and to be in a second-row seat for Pete Maravich's record-breaking career at LSU. He co-published a book on Maravich between the player's junior and senior years. He managed softball teams in the faculty-staff leagues at LSU and Illinois, played in the over-55 softball league in Champaign, and generally played a lot of softball, tennis and golf in his 50s and 60s, none of it very well, he would admit. His high point was probably winning the Class B doubles championship with his son John in Champaign's Labor Day tennis tournament, which he founded in 1978 and ran for several years with his wife, Marlene. He enjoyed being a member for more than 30 years of a long-established poker game, despite being the most consistent loser. He never got around to giving much thought to the existence of heaven and hell, but in the end probably hoped that if such did exist, he had generally conducted himself in a way that might make him eligible for the better alternative. As he requested, there will be no services. For those who would pay some tribute to him, he recommended they take in a Dodgers game in Chicago or St. Louis (preferably not a playoff game).