- published: 27 Jul 2012
- views: 1817
Frank Deford (born Benjamin Franklin Deford III on December 16, 1938 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American sportswriter and novelist.
In addition to his 50-year tenure at Sports Illustrated, where he now holds the title of Senior Contributing Writer, Deford appears monthly on National Public Radio and as Senior Correspondent for Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel on HBO. He has written 18 books, nine of them novels. A member of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, Deford was six times voted Sportswriter of the Year by the members of that organization, and was twice voted Magazine Writer of the Year by the Washington Journalism Review.
In 2012 he became the first magazine recipient of the Red Smith Award. In 2013 he was presented with the William Allen White Citation for "excellence in journalism" by the University of Kansas and became the first sports journalist ever to receive the National Press Foundation's highest honor, the W.M. Kiplinger Award for Distinguished Contributions to Journalism. Deford's archives are held by the University of Texas, where an annual lecture is presented in his name. He is a long-time advocate for research and treatment of cystic fibrosis.
Actors: Gordon Masten (actor), J.A.C. Redford (composer), Sean McCann (actor), Leonard Goldberg (producer), Craig T. Nelson (actor), Bonnie Bedelia (actress), Cherry Jones (actress), Rachel Blanchard (actress), Robert Markowitz (director), Dann Florek (actor), Peter Parasheles (editor), Elva Mai Hoover (actress), Brenda Bazinet (actress), Frank Deford (writer), Lynne MacKay (costume designer),
Plot: Based on true events, 'Alex: The Life of a Child' follows former 'Sports Illustrated' writer Frank Deford and his wife Carole when their happy, all-American family is rocked to the core when their baby daughter Alex is diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis. While CF sufferers were almost certainly doomed to an early death in the Seventies, Alex grew into a child who showed remarkable courage and strength in face of her illness. Her loving family were quick to rally around her, determined to show the same bravery as the little girl as they supported and cherished her through life and struggled to move on after her death at the tragically young age of eight.
Keywords: adoption, baby, based-on-book, based-on-true-story, blood-in-sink, brother-sister-relationship, cable-television, character-name-in-title, collapsed-lung, coughing