Retired cspan journalist and board member of the society. If you will join me in silencing all of your electronic devices, lets welcome bill and connie. [applause]. Hello everybody. Thank you you so much for coming this evening. While i was preparing a little bit for tonight to introduce bill walker, i googled a little so so the veracity of any of this is in question. The first thing i googled was the average number of people who come to a book signing event. I will tell you, it is in single digits, so please give yourself an applause for being here this evening instead of being home watching meg and kelly, and and donald trump on television. [applause]. The second thing i googled is the average age of a firsttime author who gets published by a traditional publisher. That average average age is 37 years old. So, i will tell you bill, you are skewing the numbers very much. , bill walker grew up in knoxville tennessee, he went to the university of virginia for both his undergraduate and
Started changing and they started becoming the first computer programmers. They had these incredibly long careers at nasa, 40, 50 years. One of them still works at nasa today. After words airs on book tv at sunday at nine pm eastern. You can watch all previous after words programsms booktv. Org. Good evening and welcome to the Rr Smith Center for history and art in stanton, virginia. I am the president of the augustine county Historical Society which is the sponsor ofh tonights event. The Historical Society has been preserving and promoting the history of Augusta County virginia for over 50 years. As many of you know, our our county was created in 1738 and at one time, it extended all the way to the mississippi river. Y we have a great deal of historical heritage to be proud of. We are also very proud of our20 20thcentury history. Tonight we are very pleased to welcome you and are cspan viewers to an event featuring residents and members of the society. A great evening on the great war
A lot of things that were talking about, there may not be a solution that allows you to strike the balance that you want but you can invest and engage in all kind of struggles and work toward making things equal. If your asking these questions, youre always already doing the work of balancing. If youre already considering how does my voice not get drawnl out and work for other people but not let my work for other people in some way silence orl diminish my own role here, these are are questions that i think resonate throughout all kind ofo work that were already involved with. You are already doing a lot of that. I regret that theres no time to address it but i love that one of the first identify was pentecostal. The fact that youre coming out of that tradition, one of the many black religions, how do you even, find a voice in a pentecostal complex . God bless you. [laughter] , thank you. With that we will wrap it up on behalf of everyone here i would like to think our authors. They wer
Question about that when he died, he was utterly inconsolable. Though he tried to console his children, it was a pretty tone deaf letter to his other son and he was saying whatever you have to make it half but to the soldiers. Its a heartbreaking moment he felt completely responsible for his sons death. [inaudible] microphone o microphone or i will shout it out again. Which of the wise did you wiu find the most abound of material did which was the most difficult . Most didnt keep their wives letters because they were in the field and couldnt you or they would protectively destroy them so they couldn could be capturd read. But he saved all of his wifes letters. He wrote her a letter in which he said i will tear every one of your letters up because every ounce on the march tiles and he didnt. That is the most complete. It was astonishing because the two of them were incredibly beautiful writers and if you do nothing else than find and read the letters you will have done yourself a favor.
Attack the same year as grant died. And nelly fled to europe again and that is when the memoirs were written and when her daughter was copying parts of the letters to give to the director. She had to know what was going on and allowed it to happen. She lived the rest of her life in france really. It was at a villa that was owned by her daughter and her soninlaw they had named after her husbands greatest victory. There is almost numbered else who would consider that the greatest victory. The shermans she predeceased him but they lived in washington after the war. He became the Lieutenant General of the army. She did work, as he was dealing with indians who were threatening the transcontinental rail road. She was doing missionary work and started an orphanage in washington. She was always into charitable work. There was talks about her husbands flirtation and affairs and there is evidence of that but it is clear he loved her. He was very healthy but died two years after ellen died. At th