Pulitzer Prize Poet. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1966 for "Selected Poems, 1930-1965." Born Richard Ghormley Eberhart, the son of the vice president of the Hormel Meat Packing Company, his childhood was comfortable on his family's 40-acre estate until his father lost his fortune after one of his employees embezzled over a million dollars from the company. His verse play "The Visionary Farms" in 1952 recounts this time of his life. His mother died of cancer when he was 18, giving an experience with death and grief, which he used in his poems. After studying at University of Minnesota, he earned his BA from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he later served for many years as poet in residence. He earned a second BA from St. Johns College at Cambridge, England and studied at Harvard University but left for monitory reasons. His first book of poetry, "A Bravery of Earth," was published in London in 1930. During World War II, he served in the United States Naval Reserve as a gunnery instructor at the rank of Lieutenant Commander. His war experience inspired "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment," one of his best-known poems. In 1941 he married a school teacher and the couple had a son and a daughter. He taught at Dartmouth College as an English professor for 30 years as well as visiting professor at a host of universities. Considered one of the most prominent American poets of the 20th century, he was appointed Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress in 1959. Being simple and honest, his poems were often about death, tension between childhood and adulthood, innocence and experience. Besides the Pulitzer Prize, he received a long list of coveted awards including the National Book Award for Poetry for "Collected Poems, 1930–1976" in 1977, the President's Medallion from University of Florida in 1977, a Bollingen Prize in 1962, the Shelley Memorial Award in 1952, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Award in 1950, and the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America in 1986. In 1979 he was made Poet Laureate of the State of New Hampshire. He was a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His daughter, Gretchen Cherington, published in 2020 her memoirs, "Poetic License," which gives much insight of Eberhart.