Brent Kenneth Ashabranner (November 3, 1921[4] – December 1, 2016) was an American Peace Corps administrator, including its 1967–69 deputy director, and author of more than 30 books, primarily non-fiction children's literature, which received over 40 awards.
While waiting in line to register for classes, Ashabranner met Martha White from Roswell, New Mexico, who would be his future wife.
[citation needed] With America's entry into World War II five months later, Ashabranner joined the U.S. Navy's Construction Battalion (Seabees), with training at Camp Peary near Williamsburg, Virginia.
Ashabranner and Davis used what they learned from this trip, and others like it, to tell educational stories in their magazine articles, and they wrote their first book, The Lion's Whiskers, published in 1959.
While Ashabranner worked there, U.S. President John F. Kennedy created the Peace Corps and its first director, Sargent Shriver, visited Nigeria to see about establishing the program.
Also while there, Ashabranner became a non-fiction writer, working with Davis on their last and best-selling book together, Land in the Sun: The Story of West Africa (1963).
[citation needed] Ashabranner's next assignment was in India, where he was the local director when its Peace Corps program became the largest in the world in 1965.
[citation needed] In May 1969, Ashabranner was among the guests invited to the Nixon White House for Joseph Blatchford's swearing-in ceremony as the third Peace Corps director.
Ashabranner and his wife then returned oversees while he worked with the philanthropic Ford Foundation, moving from the Philippines to Indonesia in 1976.
[citation needed] In 1980, Ashabranner and his wife returned to America to be near their daughters and devote his full-time work to writing non-fiction books for young readers.
[citation needed] Ashabranner won the Carter G. Woodson Award "for the most distinguished books appropriate for young readers that depict ethnicity in the United States" three times (1983, 1985, 1986).
[8] Author Muriel Miller Branch, who wrote in 2000 about the Gullah people, described Ashabranner as a mentor who first discerned her writing talent.