The Loss of a Hero

 

As I explained at the opening of my book, Prairie Bachelor, I wrote "for readers not terribly different from Isaac and his neighbors, ordinary Americans who care about our history."  The author who has greatly inspired me, David McCullough, passed away August 7, 2022.  His quote appears on page xxvi of my book:  "No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read." Academics do not own history, although one critic who reviewed my book seemed to think so, basing his primary criticism not on what I had written but rather on how he wished I had written in a more academic style.  There is nothing wrong with writing books for other academics, but if history is told only to scholars, how will other readers learn about our past?  David McCullough was my hero because he wrote history in a way that ordinary people wanted to read.

I am far from being unique as a fan.  His book Truman won the Pulitzer in 1992, and John Adams won the Pulitzer in 2001, both also familiar because they were made into television movies.  I won't even begin to list all of the other awards his books have won.  Probably many of you would recognize his voice as a narrator.  In 2006 President Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom.

"To me," McCullough wrote, "history ought to be a source of pleasure.  It isn't just part of our civic responsibility.  To me its an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is."  One of his books holds the record for selling the most nonfiction books on the day of his book's release.   Fans couldn't wait to read it!  What a tribute to an author that is.

I own most of his books, although not all of them...yet.  One of the things I did this morning before I began writing this blog was to make a list of McCullough's books that I do not own, (only three, I believe), but I intend to remedy  that quickly. 

 

David McCullough quote

He entered Yale University in 1951, and one of his professors was Thornton Wilder, who apparently had a significant influence on him.  After McCullough had graduated with honor, receiving a Bachelor's Degree in English, he had various jobs related to his education, but he did not publish his first book, The Johnstown Flood, until 1968.  When his first book did well enough for him to consider a career as an author, he remembered the advice Professor Wilder had given him:  Find something you want to learn about, see if anyone has already done that, and if they haven't, write it yourself.   What wonderful advice.  

McCullough already knew that he loved the "endless fascination of doing the research and doing the writing," and I believe that shows in what he has written.  I too love discovering information, perhaps information that other writers have not found or did not choose to include it in their writing, and I too love sharing what I found.  I have written in other blogs about the delight of utilizing overlooked research sources and finding new information to include in my writing.  Perhaps I sense that fascination in McCullough and that is why I love his books.

I am grateful that there are still a few of McCullough's books I have not read.  It makes my sadness of his passing slightly less to know I still have books left to read.  Somehow, it also comforts me to learn that his wife Rosalee, whom he met when they were teenagers, shared nearly all of his life with him.  Rosalee died June 9, 2022, and David McCullough followed her in death on August 7, 2022.  

Kansas Deserves More Attention!

 

Importance of Country Schools--School Isaac Werner helped build

In the 1920s, a Kansas City reporter wrote:  "Even historians don't understand Kansas.  I wonder sometimes if anybody except God understands Kansas and sometimes I think Kansas even has him fooled."  Craig Minor, a history professor at Wichita State prior to his untimely death, and the author of several books on Kansas history, including his thick volume, "Kansas, The History of the Sunflower State, 1884-2000," expressed a similar concern about how poorly even we Kansans know our own history.

"Until the Kansas everybody knows--Amelia Earhart, John Brown, Wyatt Earp, Ike Eisenhower--or think they know--Matt Dillion or Dorothy Gale--are joined by many others, our sense of place and our understanding of the local legacy will be palid."

Craig Minor's words explain my motivation for writing "Prairie Bachelor."  When I discovered Isaac Werner's journal and realized how little I knew about Kansas in the late 1800s, even though I was born and raised in the house my homesteading ancestors built, I knew there were almost certainly many other Kansans--with ancestors living at that time or relative newcomers to the state--who had no idea of the significant role Kansans played in the Populist Movement nor of the influence that Movement continues to play even today.

The Importance of early Churches: Macksville Methodist Church

Scholars know about that, but I did not want to write a scholarly book.  I wanted to write a book for readers who enjoy stories--in my case, real stories about forgotten people who played a big role in this nation.  My research for the book provides new information for scholars as well, but what excites me is hearing from friends and strangers who tell me that they fell in love with Isaac, that they have an ancestor who lived in the communities about which I write and have new respect and understanding for what their ancestors achieved, or that they relate to to "Prairie Bachelor" in some other way.  I even enjoyed the scoldings I got from two friends--one telling me she stopped reading for several days because she was angry I let Isaac die, and the other blaming me for her lazy day finishing the book after getting so involved in reading it over her morning coffee  that she couldn't put the book down until she finished it.

Importance of early businesses:  St. John, F. B. Gillmore Building

So many people have sent supportive messages during the writing of the book and compliments after reading the book, and in last weeks blog I tried to express how much all those comments have meant to me.  The blog was my effort to thank as many of you as possible--those I know and those I don't.  Thanks so much to all of you.

Like Craig Minor, who through his classes and his books sought to add to the awareness of our state and its people, I was motivated to write "Prairie Bachelor" for the same reason.  Each of you who enjoys the book justifies for me the decade of researching and writing it.  Thank you.