Brian Twist contacted me awhile ago with the sad news of legendary Rick Dodd’s passing away recently, but the family wasn’t prepared to release the sad news until today. Claire, Rick’s daughter, emailed Brian, and asked that he tell a few people including Tom McNulty, Jack Marino, and his dear friend Trudy McVicker that he had passed peacefully on July 20, 2015. Rick Dodd is a name many of you first encountered within the pages of several books about Errol Flynn.
This was before the internet, and it’s instant informmation on almost any subject. In those days, you went to a library to look up subjects like Errol Flynn on card index files and hunted up reference materials like books and magazines and newspapers and held the source masterial in your hand. In the books about Flynn invariably a photo of Errol would be credited: Courtesy Rick Dodd Collection. That’s was my first encounter with his name. Nobody had a better collection of Flynn memorabilia in the world than Rick Dodd for a very, very long time.
Rick Dodd suffered from medical conditions for a long time in his later years. But his spirit was undimmed. His funeral will be August 10, 2015.
Tom McNulty allows me to quote part of an email we exchanged about his friend Rick Dodd:
I will miss our phone conversations and letters. Each Christmas since the mid 90s or so I have been sending him a gift – usually books I had privately made or had printed of Errol Flynn photos. And each Christmas he would raise a glass and salute his hero and all of Errol’s fans as well. Rick Dodd was the last of the true gentlemen. Let him rest easy and let us pray that if indeed such things are possible he is having a good laugh and sharing stories with Errol Flynn as he would wish. There goes a bright light but I am privileged to have called him my friend.
Thanks, Tom … We wish Rick’s family our deepest condolences on their loss, and we mourn the passing of a fine gentleman.
— David DeWitt
