Delighted to welcome you to the 11th annual savannah book festival, presented by georgia power, david and nancy cintron, the family foundation, and mark and pat. Many thanks to jack and mary romano, our sponsors for this glorious venue, the Trinity United Methodist church. We would like to extend special thanks to our literary members and individual donors who have made and continue to make Saturdays Free festival events possible. 90 of our venue, of our revenue comes from donors just like you. Thank you. We are very excited to have a savannah book festival app for your phone available this year. Its very easy to get it from the app store and there are directions in your programs. Please try to download it. It will help you today. Before we get started i had a couple of housekeeping notes. Immediately following this presentation, brian curtis will be signing festival purchase copies of his books right across the way. If you are planning to stay for the next author presentation, please move forward to seats in the front so that we can accurately count how many spaces are available for the next group. Please take a moment to turn off your cell phone, and no flash photography is allowed. For the question and answer portion, please raise your hand. I will call and you and the ushers will come and bring a microphone to you. In the interest of time and to be fair to the other attendees, please limit yourself to just one question and please dont tell a story. Brian curtis is with us today courtesy of bill sickles and chris aitken, and boat and chris anders who are here with us. Brian curtis is a New York Times bestselling author of several books and has contributed to Sports Illustrated. Curtis has served as a National Reporter for cbs College Sports and was nominated for two local emmys for his work as the reporter for fox sports network. Please give him a warm welcome. [applause] thank you, nancy. Good morning. How are we . I love savannah. You have great restaurants. You, every day is beautiful weather like this. [laughing] can i i just see a show of han. How many of you live in the landings . Good lord tickets only part about about how phenomenal it is there but im truly honored to beer be in savannah to talk about one of the most impactful books for me that ive done out of my ,o tell you a quick story about rings. I dont wear a class ring. Went to the university of virginia irks some men wear jewelry, some dont. I was researching this book and heard about rings. Rings that are given to participants who play in the rose bowl. In particular, the 1942 rose bowl that i wrote about, players and young men from duke and oregon state were all given a rose bowl ring, signifying that they had participated in the story again. I didnt think much of it in my research until i had a military researcher work to get me the military files of a lot of these men out of the use archives in st. Louis. And as i reconstructed their lives, and, unfortunately, there deaths as well, there were four men that played in this game who died on the battlefields in world war ii. What was interesting is that three of the four men when they were killed in iwo jima, places in the south pacific, the only possession on the body was the rose bowl ring from 1942. And those rings were mailed home to mom and dad, often arriving months if not years before their bodies actually made it home to america. I was relating a story to a gentleman named bill halverson, and the halverson is live up in oregon and is working on a book project researching him. His father had participated in this game and has served his country. He happened to mention to me with his father had died years earlier, he was buried with his rose bowl ring on his finger from 1942. And again this ring kept coming up in my research as i was crafting this story. I got a call about two or three weeks after meeting with mr. Halverson, and he said ive got to chile a story. Sure. Im all about stories. Everyone has a story. He said he met with you a few weeks ago in the lobby of the Marriott Hotel in Downtown Portland and i was telling you how my father, blessed be his memory, was born, excuse me, was buried with his rose bowl ring on. And i said yeah, you told me that story. He said well, ive got to tell you something. You got me thinking about the 1942 rose bowl and wanted to go online and buy some memorabilia for my kids and my grandkids. My children and i went online and we started googling and went on ebay and it was a rose bowl ring for sale. And it just warmed my heart as hes telling me the story that it meant so much to him that he wanted to buy this ring. Then he said, we look at the ring more closely and it was dads ring. And i said, i dont understand. He said, many years ago thered been a robbery at my parents house and unbeknownst to me one of the items taken was his rose bowl ring. So while i believe this whole time hed he been buried with e ring on him in actuality someone had stolen the rain and that was selling it for thousands of dollars on ebay. He and his family cobbled up enough money. Gone to the authorities and the authorities had either set the statute of limitations are gone, et cetera if the halverson said gather together money and bought his fathers ring back and i was back in the family possession. So this theme of rings kept coming up in my research for this book. What started out as an article for Sports Illustrated in the summer of 2013 ended up being fields of battle. I thought this was a sports book but it didnt turn out that way. Then i thought it was a military and war book but it really didnt turn out that way either. It really is a story of the young group of men and what sacrifice means and what service means, and what happens when you come home from war. So i was struggling to find my next book topic about four or five years ago. Id gone about a year since writing my last book. I was reading a newsletter at the rose bowl put out and it was a little did you know fact section. It said did you know the only rose bowl game never to be played in pasadena was played in the room North Carolina in 1942. As a former Sports Reporter and sports author i was shocked ive never come across that littleknown fact. So i did what historians and researchers have done for centuries and i went to google. [laughing] and i typed in 1942 rose bowl. There wasnt a tremendous amount of Research Done on it but what few articles i read i was fascinated i have this granddaddy of them all game had gotten transplanted from pasadena over to durham, North Carolina, and thats what started to pique my interest in this story. What i didnt know at the time that about the Sports Illustrated story and certainly i didnt know even during all my research is that of the 80 men who coached and participated in the game, only one is still with us today. If id written this book 30 or 40 years ago it probably wouldve been a completely different book i literally had to reconstruct a story of mens lives without the men there. Without much firsthand or secondhand source knowledge. So one of the gratifying things for me in this Early Research process was just trying to find a Family Member pics i would be online sleuthing and reading obituary trying to find the name of the son or daughter, and i would finally tracked him down after two or three months. I would introduce myself on the phone and say, you know, mrs. Parker, my name is brian curtis, im writing this book. Id love to talk to you about your dad and world war ii and the rose bowl. And most of them would get emotional immediately and said brian, we would love to tell you the story but we dont know it. I had never talked about war, and dad never talked about the rose bowl. What we knew he played but we dont know much. As excited as i would get to track down these Family Members it was equally disappointed understand they could not be helpful to me. So i would get on a plane and go to oregon in the small towns of jefferson and albany and hood river and salem in the outskirts of portland, and try to collect as much information that it could from longlost cousins or from local libraries or the archives at oregon state and similar doing the same thing at Duke University where i found personal letters that were written home form the war front that probably have not been touched since youre donated to the archives. So part of this project was piecing together a military files, academic transcripts, what little newspaper stories there were about this game in 4244, and and in coming up wia narrative. One of the blessings for me in doing this project is that i have been able to educate the families about their debt and the grandparent. I can tell them when he went to high school. I can tell them what classes they took in college, a lot of them got ds and fs. [laughing] and i was not shy about passing that information on as well. Just so all the stories about how they worked hard, listen, your dad was as smart as you thought. [laughing] but i was also able for many of them to get hold of the fold military file so we knew when he enlisted in what dates they serve and what ship they shipped out on, and again it was duty for me because even though 80 or 90 information to research, i was able to pass it on to the families and give them a little bit closer to mom and dad. So really this is about building a story about a group of men who played in this now remarkable game, and ended up coincidence in the battlefield. What really hooked me on is that as did research to discover the story of Charles Haynes and frank parker. Charles haynes played for Duke University, grew up a couple blocks from campus, was an allamerican wrestler and a boy scout and everybody in durham new vigor to enroll at duke. He didnt play much on a Football Team but he suited up for coach wallace and played in the game. Shortly after that game, haynes found himself in the army. Yet tried to enlist a couple of times earlier in the air force but his eyesight had prevented him from becoming a pilot. So haynes in supply solar two years from the game in 1944 and deciding in the hills of italy against the germans. It just so happens that about a month before october 1944, a few a few months before, july, he is at an intent meant while they were off the front lines and is talking just been named frank parker. Frank parker happen to play in that same rose bowl game for the other side, oregon state. So here they are two years later not really knowing each other but having a connection of playing in the granddaddy of them all, so to speak. They both are leaders in the platoons and one of their jobs was to be the first up the hill. So imagine charging up a hill knowing the enemy is on the other side, you are the first leading thousands if not hundreds of men charging up a randomly numbered hill in italy. Charles haynes one day in october 4, 1944 charges of the hill and as he makes progress, theres no bullets coming his way. Theres no bombs. He cant believe it. He keeps going further and further your hits the apex of the hill when the germans opened fire. They rip open holes in his legs. He gets shot in the chest and it wound about the size of a softball is in his chest. Bullets are flying. His fellow soldiers cant get to them to pick them up off the battlefield. So haynes is a languor, leading out to death. He says prayers for his mom. He thinks about his parents back home in durham. He says his goodbyes, and closes his eyes. It starts to rain, then it starts to snow here and our goes by, two hours, five hours, seven hours, 17 hours he lay dying in the snow and mud on the ceiling italy. Until someone grabs his arm. Charles, charles, wake up. Wake up. Charles barely opened up his eyes. He still alive at this point and who does he see idcs frank parker. Frank parker, the vendor played against them on the football field two years earlier with help from another soldier picked up Charles Haynes bloody body, terri sewell downhill under gunfire, gets into a medical tent come hes transferred to hospital a hospital and charles makes a full recovery. Frank parker after taking to the medical tent counterbalanced immediately and went back up the hill and saved other lives over the next 24 hours. Charles haynes gets released, imagine almost dying on the field, and a few months later he is back on the front lines because we needed bodies, as americans in our war. Frank parker and Charles Haynes create a friendship. They say goodbye in may of 1945 in the austrian alps. They stay in touch a little bit when they get back in the states but never laid eyes on each other. Until approximately 1991. It was celebrating the 50th 50th anniversary of that rose bowl game, and the folks at oregon state wanted to recognize their only rose bowl champion. So they hosted a a banquet for whoever was still remaining and able to attend. They also invited any of their opponents who would played against them at duke. And there were just a handful of duke players that game. But one of them was Charles Haynes. And Charles Haynes said, i know we took a a good host our own reunion in a month but i cant wait to see the man who saved my life. I need to see if you still alive. Charles haynes traveled from durham out to oregon, and as i write about in the introduction of the book, sure enough, he starts weeping as he looks across the room and sees the man the saved his life. Four weeks later, frank parker and his wife travel to durham and the same can reunion takes place. And until their death, and then stayed in touch. Charles haynes went through a couple of marriages, and his last partner, girlfriend, mailed me last year many of his last possessions, including some of the gifts that frank parker had given to Charles Haynes. And i wrote about these two men in this book because he are two guys, one dirt poor from corvallis, oregon, one whod lost his father at the the age1 or 12 and a car accident, his uncle married his mother. He had to work all through high school and college just to make ends meet. Here is Charles Haynes in the room middle upper class family, father was an executive to an American Tobacco company. They both go off to war. They both killed dozens of men. They both get awarded medals for their service in action, but they come home to america and their lives couldnt have been more different. Charles haynes was a war hero, opened up a restaurant, gregarious, had fun, took spanish and cooking classes at Duke University, was friends with coach k, was known for Walking Around durham in full troop, opened a construction company, was very successful. Had a couple of wives as i mentioned. Frank parker moves back to oregon but stayed in italy an extra year after the war. He couldnt go home to face his lifetime sweetheart and wife. He thought it fundamentally changed as a man because of the horrors that he saw and the crimes in his eyes that he had committed. So he delayed returning home. He suffered from alcoholism most of his life. He became a fishman, never went back to complete his college education. Lived his life on the sea, almost died a few times. After his wife passed away from an aneurysm, considered suicide multiple times. Finally one of his eldest daughters got into a va hospital in kodiak alaska and then in portland, oregon, where for the first time after 50, 60 years he started to open up and talk about some of the demons of war. Some of the other players in the game came home, severed from drug abuse and alcoholism picks some committed suicide. We talk about the greatest generation, and in my eyes they all are, but we think about tickertape parades and homecomings and these men who were really boys sent to islands in places far away struggled with this the rest of their lives. And part of fields of battle, the book and narrative, what started as this sports book about other rose bowl went from one city to another ended up being a story about these boys going to war. But my own curiosity kept it from ending a war because i said to myself, what happened to these guys when they got home . Did they become teachers . Did more impact than . Did football remain a piece of their life . Im a former sports broadcaster, and for those of you who follow sports, you often hear broadcasters use war metaphors were talking about sports tickets the battle of the century. They left it all out on the battlefield. These are soldiers, and my men need to hit hard. After doing this book i realized how silly that is. Because war is nothing like football. And what i learn is that these boys, as eager as some of them were to sign up at 19, 20, 21 years old, thought that war was a game. They thought the war would be just like football because the coaches would say, men, go over there and fight hard and hit start and all it took was about an hour in battle for these young boys to realize that war is nothing in common with football. Now, as a side note some of the lessons these boys learned on the football field did help them in war, overcome adversity, getting knocked out and get it right back on your feet. The tough get going when toughness faces of them. And there are countless stories not only with these players but other athletes who have fought in war talking about the lessons they learn on the sports field kept them alive. So its a triumphant story in ways. We won the war for those of you who dont know. Those of you in savannah i hate to say it but the north actually won the civil war as well. The parts of the story that were great often overshadowed the sadness of not just the death, the suicide, the alcoholism, but stories like jackie who was two years old when he came over to america from japan with his mom. They settled in portland. He was raised in a Public School in portland living a life in a small Japanese Community in Downtown Portland going to Public School, was a great athlete, picked up the game of football, was a great basketball player, matricula