‘Civil War Fathers’ Subject of Thursday Talk at Heritage Museum
Nationally Recognized Author Pletkovich Will Speak at 3 p.m.

 

[February 27, 2019]  LINCOLN - Nationally recognized author Tim Pletkovich will be featured at the Lincoln Heritage Museum on the Lincoln College campus on Thursday, February 28 at 3 p.m., where he will speak about his book, Civil War Fathers: Sons of the Civil War in World War II.

Civil War Fathers is the story of eight American families whose fathers fought in the Civil War and whose sons and daughters fought in World War II. It evolved from an interview project involving middle school children in Peoria.

Based on interviews with the surviving WWII veterans, this absorbing book views the Civil War through the eyes of children listening to their father’s stories, and World War II through the eyes of the same children as grown up participants. The primary focus of the book, however, is the broad span of social, cultural, and economic change that swept the country over nine decades. The eight families profiled in Civil War Fathers are as diverse as would be expected from any group of eight randomly selected American families, yet their stories all share similar themes and values.

In Civil War Fathers, the World War II sons talk about their lives growing up with their elderly Civil War fathers during the 1920s and ‘30s, and how the difficult years of the Great Depression did much to prepare them for their own military service.

New York Newsday columnist William F.B. O’Reilly has called Civil War Fathers “an American treasure” and a “must-read because of Pletkovich’s extraordinary eye for human details. Pletkovich was recognized for Civil War Fathers at the 2017 Missouri Cherry Blossom Festival in Marshfield, Missouri, with the Ella A. Dickey Award. Past award recipients have included former First Lady Laura Bush, former Texas First Lady, the late Nellie Connally, and 1972 Democratic Party presidential candidate and former United States Senator, the late George McGovern.

[Mark Gordon
Public Relations and Media Manager
Lincoln College]