Mumbai: Award-winning television writer Raymond E. Goldstone, a longtime member of the Writers Guild of America, West, has died at the age of 88.

Best-known for contributing his writing talents to several popular daytime and nighttime dramas including Days of Our Lives, General Hospital, Knots Landing, and Falcon Crest, Goldstone died 13 March at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys, California, as a result of a heart attack and subsequent coronary arrest.

Born 23 July, 1919 in Little Falls, New York, Goldstone obtained a Regent’s Scholarship in 1936 to attend Cornell University, where majoring in Journalism, he worked on and co-edited the Cornell Daily Sun, the college’s campus newspaper which also served as the daily paper for the town of Ithaca, NY. Upon graduation in 1940, Goldstone secured a position as reporter for the Newark Morning Ledger in New Jersey.

Entering the Army in 1941, Goldstone wrote scripts for Army training films and, after earning the Army specialty of Cryptographic Clerk, he worked in Signal Intelligence. On 11 April, 1945, Goldstone and his superior officers witnessed first-hand the liberation of the largest remaining concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany.

On returning to civilian life, Goldstone worked as an assistant book editor for Simon and Schuster in New York and, in 1950, moved to Los Angeles, obtaining work as a story analyst at Warner Brothers. Since then he has won various awards and written many popular TV dramas.

Goldstone is the brother of the late actress-director Tracy Roberts (born Blanche Goldstone) and is survived by his wife, actress Mary Ellen Jennings Goldstone, and sister, writer and fellow WGA member Ann Marcus, as well as many nieces and nephews.