John Richards was from Hazleton, Pennsylvania and a member of the class of 1918 at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, studying the Philosophical course.  He was active at the College in the Y.M.C.A, and was also a member of Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity and a participant in freshman football.

Richards left to enlist in the spring of 1917 and served as a sergeant in the Quartermaster Corps of the American Expeditionary Forces.  He arrived in France in November 1917 and died there on October 22, 1918.