Joseph G. Rosa, 1932–2015 IN MEMORIAM

About 1968 the late Joseph Snell of the Historical Society They Called Him Wild Bill (revised edition) (KSHS) introduced me to a visiting Englishman, Joseph G. Rosa. Colonel Colt Snell added, “This man knows more about than Gunsmoke (with Robin May) anyone else in the world.” In time I learned he did. But now he is The West (with William C. Davis) gone. Cowboy—The Man and the Myth (with Robin May) Early in 2014 he accidentally struck his head in a fall at his home The West of Wild Bill Hickok near London. Joe—as everyone called him—lingered for a year An Illustrated History of Guns and Small Arms (with Robin May) before dying peacefully on January 17, 2015. He was eighty-two With Badges and Bullets (with other authors) years old having been born on November 20, 1932, in West London. Guns of the American West Four years later his family moved to Woodville Gardens, Ruislip, Colt and the Tower of London Middlesex, northwest of London, where Joe lived for the rest of his Rowdy Joe Lowe (with Waldo E. Koop) life. and His Wild West At an early age Joe’s father introduced his Age of the son to American motion pictures and Wild Bill Hickok, the Man and His Myth especially to cowboy star Buck Jones. Later in Wild Bill Hickok, his life Joe wrote a private biography of the Wild Bill Hickok (for young readers) cowboy star and presented the only copy to The West of Wild Bill Hickok (revised edition) Buck’s widow, Odille. They kept in touch until she died in 1996. In addition to his books published in the After his schooling, Joe found a job as a U.S. and United Kingdom, he contributed copywriter. Later he entered military service countless articles to magazines and journals. and served with the Royal Air Force in Joe also became an expert on photographs England and in Malta during the Suez crisis of Hickok, identifying and confirming many in 1956. After his military life, he worked in old photos of Wild Bill. He also became an communications with Cable & Wireless and authority on early firearms. retired in 1999 from the well-known Lloyd’s The Royal Armouries at the Tower of Salvage Association in London. London asked Joe to catalogue all of their Through the years Joe never lost his firearms. In return he was awarded a interest in the American West. After seeing fellowship with the Royal Society of Arts, Cecil B. DeMille’s film , Joe of which he was very proud. Joe was active began mammoth research into the character with the English Arms & Armour Society, the James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok played in the National Small Bore Rifle Association, and the film by . His research was still Westerners organization. He not only served continuing when Joe died. as president of the English Westerners Society but as president of Beginning in the late 1950s, Joe wrote hundreds of letters Westerners International headquartered at the National Cowboy & to American historical societies, including KSHS, requesting Western Heritage Museum in . documents and information on Hickok. The KSHS holdings became Joe was dedicated to researching Hickok and the American West. so important that Joe began making annual trips from London to He was a unique man with a quick wit and sense of humor. He was Topeka to do research. It was there that Nyle Miller and Joe Snell a scholar who sought every fact, every bit of information he could got to know Joe and take him under their wings. gather on Hickok. He once told this writer that he was trying to find In 1964 Joe’s first book on Hickock,They Called Him Wild Bill, was the soul of the legendary gunfighter. He wanted to know how the published by the University of Oklahoma Press. It received great man thought. At the time of his death, Rosa was still trying to track acclaim as the first real biography of Hickok. Some reviewers called Hickok’s movements in Missouri in 1864. it definitive. The late Joseph Snell was correct when he said Joe knew more It was only the first of several books Joe would write about about Wild Bill than anyone else. Although Joseph G. Rosa is now Hickok and related aspects of the American West. In chronological gone, his scholarship survives and lives on in his books and articles order the other books were: on Hickok and the West. His writings also reflect an Englishman’s love of Kansas, the American West, and our history. Alias Jack McCall The Gunfighter—Man or Myth? David Dary The Pleasure of Guns Professor Emeritus Wild Bill Hickok: Sharpshooter and U.S. Marshall of the Wild West University of Oklahoma

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