7 Questions with Dr. Barbara C.Cruz: Educator, Historian, and Author

 

Dr. Bárbara C. Cruz is Professor of Social Science Education in Tampa, Florida. She is a former

high school history teacher. Today, she works with both pre- and in-service social studies

teachers. Her current project involves the infusion of visual art in teaching social studies, an

offshoot of a Fulbright Global Scholar award she completed in Alicante, Spain.

1. How and when did you get hooked on history?

My high school American History teacher, Ms. Lani Dunthorn. She was passionate about her

subject and, before the term “individualized instruction” was used, employed exactly that

strategy. I remember being bored to tears by our classroom history textbook and not completing

the assigned readings. She offered me the option to read Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the

Wind instead, with some ancillary research activities to determine what was fact and what was

fiction. Brilliant!

2. What role does history play, or has it played, in your personal life?

I am an immigrant from Cuba, coming to the U.S. in 1966 under the Immigration and Nationality

Act of 1965 signed into law by President Johnson. Like many immigrant kids, I served as both a

linguistic translator for my family as well as a cultural mediator. What I would learn in school, I

would later teach my parents at home. We became American citizens on July 4, 1976, the U.S.

Bicentennial. History is part and parcel of my and my family’s personal and professional

journeys.

3. How does history play a part of your professional life/career?

I earned a Bachelor’s in Social Studies Education from the University of Miami, followed by

Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Social Studies Education from Florida International University.

Each of these degrees focused on the curriculum and instruction of the social sciences, with

history at the core. My programs of study all required courses in history --- world, U.S., Latin

American --- and I have continued to weave these learnings in my work, both in the classroom

and in publications.

4. Why is studying/knowing history important?

People from all walks of life must know not only their own history, but that of others. How can we

be part of the human race without this knowledge?

5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?

Such a tough choice to make! I guess I would have to say the U.S. Civil Rights Era. Although I

lived through it, I was a child at the time. I remember being confused by so many events and

people (especially since I was not yet fluent in English and my parents could not always help me

understand). So now, learning about that period helps me make sense of those memories and

brings me back full circle.

6.   Your “day job” is as a professor of social science education.  What are particular challenges

that you see facing your students in 2024 as future social studies teachers and how do you

prepare them to be great teachers?

The future (and current) social studies teachers I work with report so many distractions I never

had to face as a novice teacher. Social media and the rise of misinformation is a huge problem

among young people. I try to help teachers teach critical media literacy to their students.

Educators are also facing encroachment by politicians and community groups, resulting in harsh

curricular mandates that are not always in the best interests of students or teachers. I always

remind my students that ultimately, they are curricular and instructional gatekeepers,

professionals who have agency in their classrooms.

7.       Your books include a history of the Cuban sandwich and an award-winning children’s

biography of César Chávez.  What kinds of stories pique your interest as a researcher and

author?

I love the idea of revealing “hidden histories.” My first book for young people was a biography of

the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. It’s hard to imagine now because she has become a cultural

icon, but when I started the research in 1994, she was little known in U.S. popular media. Since

then, I have written books for both young learners as well as teachers. My work also allows me

to explore and publish scholarly works on a wide variety of topics such as teaching English

language learners, the history of segregated beaches, using visual art to teach about social

issues, and the history of LGBTQ communities within the larger historical context.

The Cuban sandwich book has been a fun project and my co-authors and I thoroughly enjoy

introducing people to one of the hallmarks of my culture.

7 Questions with M.B. Zucker, Author of The Middle Generation

 

M. B. Zucker has been interested in storytelling for as long as he can remember. He devoted himself to historical fiction at fifteen and earned his B.A. at Occidental College and his J.D. at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He lives in Virginia with his family. He is the author of four novels. Among his honors is the Best Fictional Biography Award at the 2023 BookFest.  Website https://www.michaelbzucker.com/ 

1.      How and when did you get hooked on history?

I’ve been interested in storytelling for as long as I can remember. I wrote “books” about dinosaurs at age seven and discovered superheroes at nine. I learned about World War II at 15 in history class, and my interests mapped onto that real-life conflict between heroes and villains for the fate of civilization. Eisenhower became my favorite “character” from the war, which spurned my reading about all of the Presidents and American history.

2.      What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?

There hasn’t been a part of my life that history hasn’t touched. Eisenhower became a third parent, as I used to joke, shaping my values and worldview. I saw everything through a historical lens, including my own life, which I analyzed the way historians would American and world history, dividing it into different periods and predicting how I would remember specific events over time.

3.      How does history play a part of your professional life/career?

History has been part of my professional life ever since that initial spark 13 years ago. I wrote a World War II novel titled A Great Soldier in the Last Great War while in high school and founded my school’s chapter of the Veterans Heritage Project, which interviewed Arizona veterans and catalogued their experiences in annual volumes. I majored in history in college and wrote my thesis on how Charles de Gaulle inspired Nixon’s opening to China. I received a concentration in National Security Law in law school and interned with the Navy and Coast Guard JAGs and with the Residual Special Court of Sierra Leone. I became a professional historical fiction writer in 2021 and recently published my fourth novel.

4.      Why is studying/knowing history important?

It’s a cliche for a reason to say that you can’t understand the present without studying the past. History informs us how the modern world came to be and is also what policy makers and learned people look to for guidance. It also is the ultimate source of knowledge about human nature and all of its contradictions and nuances. It tells us how people become good, evil, or in between, and how individuals and groups rise and fall in a competitive and vicious world.

5.      What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?

Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency. It was my dominant obsession in college and I read 35 nonfiction books about him. I’m particularly interested in his foreign policy legacy. I synthesized the analyses of various historians and credit him with stabilizing the nuclear age. He did this by designing the nuclear deterrent, an affordable way to contain communism until the USSR collapsed, and also defused repeated crises in Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Suez, Hungary, and Berlin where his advisors and the Joint Chiefs advocated a nuclear strike. He refused each time while preventing communism’s spread. Doing this set a global taboo against using nuclear weapons. I think this is one of the greatest achievements of any leader in world history and it inspired my first novel as an adult, The Eisenhower Chronicles.

6.         Your books are incredibly diverse and unique. Your most recent book, The Middle Generation, is a political thriller centering on John Quincy Adams.  How does that idea even start?

The Eisenhower Chronicles was a learning experience and I knew I’d grown as a writer through the process of assembling it. Upon completion I wanted to pick a similar topic to test myself. I see Eisenhower as the greatest American foreign policy practitioner of the 20th century and so Adams, the greatest Secretary of State and practitioner of the 19th century, was a logical follow-up. I started researching him and, once I realized that the Monroe Doctrine, which he wrote as Secretary of State, was the winning chess move in his showdown with Europe over South American independence, I knew I had my story. I was all the more excited because Europe at the time was controlled by the Holy Alliance, a group of monarchies who kept the peace in the continent through force after Napoleon’s defeat. Their leader was an Austrian diplomat named Metternich, who was arguably the greatest diplomat in European history. That meant the story could be framed as a clash between Adams and Metternich, which interested me and, I hope, interests readers. Writing it as a political thriller gave the piece a distinct flavor and also an irony that I enjoy since the period is known as the Era of Good Feelings. Finding such a story in such a period is something I’d like to think only I would have done.

7.         What do we have wrong, in your opinion, about John Quincy Adams and how should he be remembered?

I’m not sure Adams’ role in historical memory is “wrong” as much as it’s incomplete. His showdown with the Holy Alliance over South America’s independence is a large oversight that I hope my novel helps to correct. We should also view him as the primary bridge between the Founders and Lincoln. He was not only the second President’s son, but his career started with George Washington appointing him minister to The Hague and ended as Lincoln’s mentor in Congress. He even prophesied how a future President would end slavery with an executive order during a civil war. Finally, his story should be a warning of how parents pressuring their children into fields not of their choosing and to be very ambitious can negatively impact their mental health, which in turn can harm their own families.

7 Questions with Tony Bernard, Author of The Ghost Tattoo

 

Tony Bernard grew up sailing, surfing and swimming on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, being raised with his younger sister and brother by his hardworking father Henry, a local family doctor. He initially studied dentistry at Sydney University before following his dad into medicine, undertaking his medical training at Nottingham and Cambridge Universities in Britain.

After returning to practice in Newcastle, regional NSW and Sydney, he spent his career working in the emergency department of Mona Vale Hospital, the same hospital in which his dad had previously worked for many years. More recently, he also works in the emergency department of the new Northern Beaches Hospital.

His father Henry was his hero, and it was natural that he followed him into the medical profession. Yet it was one thing to idolize Henry and another to understand who he was and what he had gone through. Over decades and during multiple trips to Europe, Tony found himself on a path of discovery, eventually writing his father's memoirs shortly before his death in 2016. What began as a journey to understand his father became the uncovering of an extraordinary holocaust survival story.

Tony lives on the Northern Beaches of Sydney with his wife Jennifer and daughter Sarah.

His book, The Ghost Tattoo, was published in September or 2023. His website is https://www.tonybernard.com.au/

1. How and when did you get  hooked on history? I have had lifelong interest in history from childhood due to my father’s interest in both history  and current affairs .This stems from his life experience as a Holocaust survivor. We grew up discussing  past events particularly from the Second World War. 2. What role does history play or has it played in your personal life? I studied history at high school but it is now one of my main hobbies combined with  geopolitics and  current affairs as well. At school I never fully appreciated the importance of documentary evidence.  History to me had been the telling of stories about past events. One of the things I am proud about in my  book 'The Ghost Tattoo’, is that fact that my father’s Holocaust survival story is backed by evidence.  When I showed a draft of my book to the historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM), he told me  that the things described my book needed to be supported with evidence and that he would help me.  In particular he helped me get access to the files of the war crimes trial at which my father was a witness. After reading the finished book, he now says that he is unaware of any other Holocaust survivor with  as much evidence backing up their story as in my father’s case. 3. How does history play  a part of your professional life/career? I am a medical doctor and am very aware of the history of medicine and how rapidly medical practice  changes. And medicine like history is evidence based. We have all just experienced the biggest medical  crisis of our lives in the Covid 19 pandemic, which will be a major defining historical event of the early  21st century. 4. Why is studying/knowing history important? History explains so much of the world in which we live. And because history is the product of human  existence, it is affected by human behaviour. Thus, we see history repeated because human behaviour is  repeated. And with increasing understanding of the forces driving geopolitics, history becomes less of a  random series of events and more of a ‘predictable’ science. 5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why? Because of my father’s Holocaust experience including the loss of his parents and wife, as well as his  multiple near-death experiences, I am interested in twentieth century history, particularly the Second  World War period. The Holocaust was the defining point of difference about the Second World War,  even though there have been some attempts at genocide in previous wars ( e.g. the Armenian genocide  by the Turks in WW1). But I believe the twentieth century could really be called the Eighty Years War,  starting in the Balkan Wars around 1912, leading to WWI, which led to the birth of communism and  fascism, which led to WW2, then the Cold War, which lasted until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. One of the best things to come out of the 20th Century is the accountability of governments in  democracies to their people.  WW1 was started by unaccountable monarchies whereas by the end of  the 20th Century democratic governments around the world are held much more accountable for the  lives of their soldiers and citizens.                                                                        Tony Bernard podcast appearance 6.         What prompted you to uncover your family history as documented in The Ghost Tattoo?    Initially my father had me record his oral history of his early life and Holocaust experience for the  record for family and friends. However, the more I researched over the years, the more I learned and  uncovered, culminating in the documentary evidence I found including access to the war crimes trial  records I mentioned earlier. It was not until I wrote the final chapter of the book that I came to  understand my father’s regret and turmoil about the role he played in the Holocaust.   I just ask the reader; What would you have done in his position? 7.          What did you learn about yourself and your family from this experience?  I have come to realise that, in effect, my father is having me explain to the world his position and role  during the Holocaust. He is getting me, on his behalf, to put on the record for history, what he had seen happen in the Tomaszow Jewish Ghetto during this terrible time.

This is a photo of Hermann Wiese, the Gestapo Chief in Tomaszow in November 1942 at the time of the deportation of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto to the Treblinka death camp.

He personally selected Bernard's grandmother Theodora for the train to the death camp.

It comes from the Hessisches Archive in Darmstadt.

This is Bernard's father's registration form at the Dachau concentration camp from 27 October 1944.

7 Questions With AJ Sam, Historical Fiction Author

 

AJ Sam, born and raised in St. Petersburg, FL, is a recently retired public- school teacher in Volusia County, FL. A 4-year U.S. Air Force veteran (1975-1980), he graduated from St. Petersburg Jr. College and worked in the Engineering and Computer fields through the ‘80s and into the 90s. In 1997, he accepted a calling from God, returned to college, and earned an Education degree (Special Education) from University of South Florida. This began his 20+ year career in Education in Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Volusia County (FL) schools.

In 2003, he again accepted God’s call – this time to the ministry - and was ordained in 2007. A sports fan – Tampa Bay Bucs, Rays & Lightning - he enjoys watching and attending games. He’s married and lives in Riverview, FL. He has a daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter.

An avid history buff, his writing attests to this fact with his attention to the details of the historical events, facts, and characters he weaves throughout his fiction. As an author of historical fiction, AJ Sam believes in the necessity of studying the past - but not repeating the past - instead learning from the past to insure a brighter future for humanity. Website https://theajsam.com/

1. How and when did you get hooked on history?

I became interested in history when a neighbor gifted a set of Brittanica Encyclopedias to my family when I was about 8 years old. I learned about history, geography, climate, socio-economic, and geo-political concepts. It became more than just academic to me when, as an African American growing up in the segregated 1960s USA, I discovered the history being shown was neither accurate nor complete in literature, TV, or Hollywood.

2. What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?

As I learned the history of African Americans – the good, the bad, and the ugly – I discovered despite obstacles that was and are thrown at us, my people didn’t and won’t allow it to hinder us from fulfilling our purpose. In the beginning of my book, A Journey Far: Ibere, I quote from Ecclesiastes 1:9-11History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually, it is old; nothing is ever truly new. We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now. People have been trying to control people since the dawn of time. The mistakes that were made before King Solomon’s time continued to be made after his time. They were made during Jesus’ time here on Earth. They were made in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Industrial Age worldwide. They were made in the 17th, through the 20th centuries in America. And the same mistakes are happening today, August 17, 2023. Nothing that’s happening now is new under the sun or the Son.

3. How does history play a part of your professional life/career?

I accepted God’s calling to go to the Public School system and teach at-risk students in my community after spending the first part of my adult life pursuing dollar bills and acclaims of man. It wasn’t a choice I would’ve made, but I’ve been totally fulfilled by teaching young minds. Despite making less money, trying to reach challenging students, and navigating through educational policies that strained my sense of reason it has been a joy. As far as history goes, it shows us that when some person, group, or government wanted to control another – the first thing they did was try to limit educational opportunities. Then they tried to limit their knowledge of themselves and their culture – yes, their history. During my 23-year teaching career, I attempted to share the history of us – all of us, whenever I could, and with whoever I could.

4. Why is studying/knowing history important?

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. (either George Santayana, EdmundBurke, or Winston Churchill said it)

5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?

First, I would change the words “your favorite”, to “the most necessary” in your question. So, now I’ll answer this question . . .  What is THE MOST NECESSARY period or aspect of history to learn about and why?  It would be from 1945 to 1970. It was a societal upheaval like never before. The USA came out of WWII as a world power. Except for Pearl Harbor, HI, the country had survived unscathed. The economy was booming. Hope sprung eternal. The country’s future was so bright, we HAD to wear shades. Many of our young men had sacrificed “their all” in war. Men of color had proven their mettle on the battlefields of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Ocean. Women had proven their ability back home in the industrial machine. But after Hiroshima, things went backwards. Despite all that was available, all that was sacrificed, many still didn’t want to share the power. The 1960s burst on the scene with JFK, MLK, Jr., Malcom X, and Muhammad Ali along with a consortium of young people, people of color, and women who dared to stop asking but instead demanded what was rightfully theirs. The blueprint they left for us can serve as our guide to build a better tomorrow. Nonviolent action, with an emphasis on both nonviolence AND action. This country had changed, we had changed, but Eccl. 1:9 reminds us that history repeats itself.

6. How did you become a writer of historical fiction?

It began as an assignment for my Reading Instruction coursework at the University of South Florida back in the late 90s. My 2-page, 463-word story about Harriet “Moses” Tubman rescuing a slave evolved into a 370-page, 112,611-word manuscript – which is the first book in the A Journey Far tetralogy. My journey in authoring this novel went from hopes of a money-making venture to an adventure of discovery of self. I am a better human being because of the journey and pray my readers have similar epiphanies.

7. What can readers expect from A Journey Far and upcoming books?

This novel is the first book in a tetralogy. All the books have the same title - A Journey Far, but different subtitles. The commonality of the subtitles, however, is the Yoruba language. I use this because the Yoruba language was the predominate language in the west-central region of Africa during the Middle Passage.

This first book - A Journey Far: Ibere, which is Yoruba for “Beginnings”, follows James, the protagonist, from six years of age to his early 20s. The second book in the series, A Journey Far: Okunrin, which is Yoruba for “A Man” follows James from his early 20s to his mid-20s. The third book in the series, A Journey Far: Ibọwọ, which is Yoruba for “Respect”, follows James from his mid-20s to his mid-30s. And the final book in the tetralogy, A Journey Far: Gbigba, which is Yoruba for “Acceptance”, follows James from his mid-30s on.

The A Journey Far tetralogy is not a history text. The history has been thoroughly researched and is placed within the timeline noted. The historical facts have been checked, double-checked, Wikipedia’ed, and Googled. The thread that ties them together is fiction. The characters have been fleshed out, developed, and have qualities that add to the narrative. The narrator stays out of the way, and allows the characters, geography, and events to drive the story. Indeed, several historical facts I thought I knew were revealed to me during my research (thank you Google), which caused me to alter the narrative on more than one occasion. For instance, I had James, the protagonist, reading the opening pages of Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities aloud in the Master’s study. Well, I discovered just in time, that this Dickens novel wasn’t published until 1859, when James was in NYC. Well, I had him read another book in the Master’s study, and in a later part of A Journey Far: Ibere, I had him reference A Tale of Two Cities, as a current book.

A Journey Far tells the story of historical people and events through the eyes of everyday people far removed from the power structure. People who lived their lives amidst the backdrop of wars and rumors of wars - of radical changes in politics, social order, and industry. Most of my characters are not movers nor shakers, they’re not privy to the details of the country or the world. They are ordinary folks living through the most extraordinary time in the history of the United States of America.

A Journey Far: Ibere will be hurtful and humiliating to many. But it is a tale of survival, triumph, and vindication. Things you can't attain without the hurt and humiliation. It is also true to the history of this United States of America. A fact that is lost on some today.

7 Questions with Pia Jordan, Author of Memories of a Tuskegee Airmen Nurse

 

Pia Marie Winters Jordan is producing a multi-media documentary on the Army Nurse Corps members who served with the Tuskegee Airmen at Tuskegee Army Air Field during World War II. Her mother, Louise Virginia Lomax Winters, was a First Lieutenant and one of those nurses.

She is a retired associate professor in the Department of Multimedia Journalism, School of Global Journalism and Communication at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. She was also one of the advisers to the Morgan State University Association of Black Journalists. She came to Morgan in August of 2008. She taught students in broadcast news writing, reporting and producing as well as internship preparation, senior capstone and media studies. For more information about her Tuskegee Army Nurses Project:  http://www.tuskegeearmynurses.info/

1. How and when did you get hooked on history?  

I was more hooked on journalism, but my uncle, Dr. Edgar A. Toppin, Sr.,  was a historian, author and a professor at the former Virginia State College in Petersburg, Virginia.  He wrote several books dealing with the Black Experience and had a television show dealing with Black history in the 1960's.  One of his books was A Biographical History of Blacks in America Since 1528. I have learned he wrote ten books in his lifetime.  He was also a past president of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).  I was proud of his work.  I also loved to visit Harper's Ferry, West Virginia where I saw where my father attended courses at Storer College which provided an education for blacks and the story of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.

 

   2.  What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?

I have come to value the roles different people have played in determining the direction of history in our world.  I like knowing the backstories of incidents that are happening today.  It goes back to the saying by Edmund Burke-"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."

3. How does history play  a part of your professional life/career?   

Since learning about my mother's participation during World War II as a Tuskegee Airmen Nurse, I have come to appreciate how the participation of people in history, no matter how large or small, can play a great part with regard to the world's stage.  Now that I am retired from broadcast journalism and teaching the subject, I have spent more than a decade researching and learning about the period of World War II.

4. Why is studying/knowing history important?  

Studying and knowing history is important because it can provide answers to future concerns of a nation good or bad.  We can learn what has worked or what hasn't in policy decisions and conflicts between countries.

5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?  

I personally like learning about and looking at the history of the Elizabethan Era.  I find it fascinating understanding the hierarchy of the lords and ladies, etc.,  dress, health concerns, political environment, transportation, etc.

   

6.       How did Memories of a Tuskegee Airmen Nurse come about and how did you research the book?  

When I started teaching multimedia journalism at a university in Maryland, a colleague saw I was distraught after not having done anything about my mom being a Tuskegee Airmen Nurse--especially after she had some minor strokes and ended up in a nursing home.  My colleague encouraged me to get started now by first interviewing the nurses.  Well that was in 2008 and in 2009 I began interviewing the nurses and any Tuskegee Airmen who knew them while on the base.  I literally have been visiting archival sites around the country to research the period when the Tuskegee Army Flying School was in operation. I have visited nurses and airmen in California, Maryland and New Jersey.  I have visited archives and museums in Washington, D.C., College Park, Maryland, Riverside, California, Detroit, Michigan, Montgomery, Alabama, Tuskegee, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana.

 

7.       One of your ultimate goals is to make a documentary. Where does that project stand and how can people help?   

Raising the money to produce the documentaries will be the next goal.  It will take funds to hire, videographers, graphic artists and a producer to help complete a first rate project.  I have been asked about curriculum for students in studying my book, Memories of a Tuskegee Airmen Nurse and Her Military Sisters.  Maybe, that could also be a goal.  I have set up a GoFund Me site for future projects. ( https://www.gofundme.com/f/b84v9y-tuskegee-army-nurses-project?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=widget&utm_campaign=p_cp%2Bshare-sheet )

 

7 Questions With Erwin Wunderlich, Author

 

Wunderlich grew up in 1950s Florida, fascinated by the stories and experiences of his ancestors and their recollections dating back to the time of statehood.  Starting in his teenage years, he began to record some of their memories, names, and dates that might someday be important to others. When it came time to consider prospective colleges, he had the opportunity to visit the Naval Academy and  subsequently earned an appointment there.   After a subsequent time in the submarine service, he and his wife Susan returned to Florida. Through the years, he earned two masters degrees, one in business and the other in engineering, and a doctorate degree in education. He and Susan raised four children, each of which would themselves attend service academies and become military officers. Today, he occupies his time with writing historical fiction, chiefly based in Civil War and Pioneer era Florida, researching, beekeeping, and carving scrimshaw. His next novel is expected to be published in the fall.

1. How and when did you get  hooked on history?

—My father kept shoving his favorite historical fiction novels in front of me when I was a child.  They were good books by Richard Powell, Marjorie Rawlings, Frank Slaughter, and other authors.  I especially enjoyed stories about the struggles of the pioneers.  

2. What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?  

— A big part.  Besides the extensive research for my historical novels, I also do their illustrations and even further I do award-winning historical scrimshaws.  For those who might not be aware, scrimshaw is an old engraving process where I add ink to my scratchings (see photo example of a scrimshaw I did of Chief Osceola on abalone shell).

3. How does history play  a part of your professional life/career? 

—My family has always loved history, whether it be history by finding lost relics on my bee farm, or history driving by roadsigns (such as in Archer, Florida which motivated me to write my DRUMMER novel concerning Richmond’s gold coming to Archer in 1865). I love doing the requisite background historical research for my fiction books, plus writing articles for various historical magazines.

4. Why is studying/knowing history important?

—History is the glue behind our human beliefs and heritage.   Local history has unfortunately become shortchanged in our formal education process.  In 1960s Florida, for example, I saw each county controlling its own history curriculum and learning objectives.  Then thanks to the power of funding, with the worry of falling behind other nations, the state took over with its own cram-packed curricula and standards.  And now there is further pressure to have a national curriculum.  

5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?

—I like pioneer-type history that tries to give the reader an appreciation of the hardships that our trailblazers faced.  These difficulties and challenges seem oft forgotten nowadays, but can be quite inspiring.  It is my own hope that folks will enjoy my own historical works, plus get busy on their own historical efforts such as documenting their own families’ stories, doing drawings, or the like.

6.       Tell us about your first book Salvos on the Backwater and about your latest projects?

—I had joined a Jacksonville writing club, as a lark, that met one night a week after work.  The group required three pages of writing each time, else you would get the boot from the club.   After such weekly critiques, and a year’s worth of pages, I found myself in a good position to come out with my SALVOS book as a historical novel. It would won a number of first-place awards in various contests, to include the Patrick Smith Award which was presented to me at a banquet by Mr. Smith himself.

7.       Florida seldom gets much attention in Civil War History. What exactly was its significance during the war and what are some examples of stories that should be researched and told?

—Florida turned out to be the breadbasket of the Confederacy, supplying the Army of Northern Virginia with cows and other staples.  As to the state’s few soldiers from its small population, Robert E. Lee designed the Florida war strategy to allow Federal coastal raids, then for the militia to respond to such raids with hit-and-run attacks (much like the Seminoles’ hit-and-run war strategy in Florida up to the year 1858).  

Florida had tough (the best) battle-ready soldiers and cavalrymen, both mainstream and militia, and there is much lore concerning their CW exploits.  Floridians were able to defend Tallahassee and make it the only state capital east of the Mississippi River never overrun by the Federals.

Today, btw, reenactors and folks remember Florida’s two major battles annually at her Olustee and Natural Bridge State Parks, come each February and March. I am often invited to attend these festivals with my books.  The Olustee event is quite large, and I would suggest it to new folks that might want to witness living history.