Richard D. Bright, a former newspaperman turned political science professor who also enjoyed teaching the incarcerated, died Jan. 14 in his sleep at his home in Woodstock in Howard County. He was 89.
“[He] was a very committed professor and a professor who brought that commitment to life,” said Freeman A. Hrabowski III, a former colleague at what is now Coppin State University, where he had been a dean and math professor.
“He had a distinct way of discussing and putting world events in perspective for his students. He wanted to prepare them as they entered the world,” said Mr. Hrabowski, who retired in 2022 as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
“He was a professor to the students, but a friend to me. He also had a great sense of humor and a wonderful smile,” Mr. Hrabowski said.
Richard Dale Bright — who was known as Rich — was the son of Cooper B. Bright, a career naval officer, and Mary Elenor Williams Bright, who managed the family home. He was born in Philadelphia, and spent his early years in Wildwood Crest, New Jersey.
Because of his father’s naval service, the family moved frequently.
“My dad went to something like 22 different schools,” said his daughter, April Bright Baer, of Ellicott City.
Diagnosed with dyslexia and frustrated after being told by a teacher that he was hopeless academically and therefore should learn a trade, he was 17 when he dropped out of George Washington High School in Alexandria, Virginia, and joined the Navy.
While serving as a sonar operator on the submarine USS Clamagore during the Korean War, he earned his GED diploma.
After being honorably discharged, he attended Rutgers University on the GI Bill and earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
While home during college summers in Arlington, Virginia, he met and fell in love with Sally Sira, who lived in the same apartment complex.
The couple married in 1960 and moved to Cambridge where he began his journalism career as a sports reporter for the Cambridge Banner, where he was “one of the first reporters to include coverage of segregated African American high school teams with photographs,” Ms. Baer said.
In 1961, they moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he covered agriculture for the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, and two years later moved once again to Rochester, New York, where he joined the staff of the Democrat and Chronicle.
After leaving the paper, he earned a master’s degree in political science at Carleton University in Ottawa, and four years later, his doctorate in political science at Howard University.
Mr. Bright began his career as an academic in 1970 at what was then Coppin State College, where for the next three decades he taught U.S. government, state and local comparative politics, and political theory.
In addition, he also developed a curriculum on Canadian politics and would accompany his students to Ottawa where they met members of Parliament and were able to sit in on question-and-answer sessions.
He was a former president of the Middle Atlantic Conference for Canadian Studies, and an active member of the American Federation of Teachers.
In addition to his teaching at Coppin, Mr. Bright taught inmates at the Maryland Penitentiary.
In a 1991 interview with The Sun, he said he had seen “a lot of these guys come into the college program as hard-shelled people with everything against them, and a chance to get an education opens a whole new world to them.”
He retired in 2000.
He was a lifelong sports fan and also was a jazz enthusiast.
Plans for a memorial service are incomplete.
In addition to his wife, a retired executive assistant, and daughter, he is survived by three grandsons.
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