Details, but i put it in the book because i felt it had to be understood. Many people reported the abuse being snatched out of the arms of mothers into this inferno wind. O tokyos canal, so people who got out of the asphalt and out of the shelters wind with their families into the canals to escape from the fire. But the canals were broiling in tens of thousands in the canal. The winds were all but flipping them over. Thousands of feet still above, the crews had to put on their oxygen masks to escape the stench of burning flesh. So, as lemay, who was in charge of that, curtis lemay tells it in his book, it was the greatest manmade killing in the history of the world. Book tvs live coverage of the savanna book festival now continues. Youom will hear from author bryn curtis. Hes talking about his vote that looks at the only rose bowl to ever take place outside of pasadena, california. This is live coverage on booktv. Good morning, book lovers. My name is nancy lieb and im delighted to welcome you to the 11th annual savanna book festival, presented by Georgia Power coming david and nancy cintron, do she and Family Foundation and mark and patsy lynn. Many thanks to jack and mary raman l. , our sponsors for this glorious venue at the Trinity United Methodist church. Wed like to extend special thanks to our literary numbers and individual donors to have made and continue to make Saturdays Free festival event possible. 90 of our revenue comes from donors just like you. Thank you. We are very excited to have a savanna oaks festival ask for your phone available. Very easy to get it from the app store in our direction the program. Please try to download it. Before we get started, i have a couple ofrt House Keeping order. Immediately following this presentation, bryan curtis will be signing festival purchased 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 we can accurately count how many spaces are available for the next group. These take a moment to turn off your cell phone and no flash photography is allowed. For the questionandanswer portion, please raise your hand, all calling you and the ushers will bring a microphone to you. In the interest of time and to be fair to the other attendees, let yourself to one question and please dont tell a story. Bryan curtis is with us today courtesy of bill steckel and chris akin and belle and chris anders, who are here with us. Bryan curtis is a New York Times bestselling author ofes 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 a reporter for fox sports net. Please give him a warm welcome. [applause] thank you coming nancy. Good morning. How are we . I love savanna. You have great restaurants. Every day is beautiful weather like this. Can i do see a show of hands. How many of you live in the landings . Good lord. All ive heard about is how phenomenal it is. I am truly honored to be here in savanna to talk about one of the most impactful books for me that ive done. I want to tell you a quick story about rings. I dont wear a class ring, linked university of virginia. Some men wear jewelry, some dont. I was researching this book and i heard about rings. Rings that are given to participants who play in the rose bowl and in particular come in the 192 rose bowl that i wrote about, players and young men from duke at oregon state were all given a roseor bowl ri, signifying that they would participate in historic king. I didnt think much of it in my research until i had a military researcher work to get me to military files of a lot of these men out of the u. S. Archives in st. Louis. As a reconstructed their lives and unfortunate need their deaths as well, there were four men that played in this game who died on the battlefields of world war i ii. What was interesting is that three of the four men when they were killed adhesive that come at you with gmail, places in the south so sick, the only possession on their body was the rose bowl ring from 1942. Those rings were mailed home to mom md and dad, often arriving months if not years before their bodies actually made it home tot america. I was relating this toy to a gentleman named bill halverson in the halversons live in oregon and i was working on a o book project, researching him. His father had participated in this game and had served his country and he happened to mention me when his father had died years earlier, he was buried with his rose bowl ring on his finger from 1942. Again, this rain kept coming up in my research as i was crafting theea story. I got a call about two or three weeks after meeting with mr. Halverson and he said bryan, ive got to tell you a story. Sure, im all about stories. Everyone has a story. He said that with you a few weeks ago the lobby of the Marriott Hotel in Downtown Portland and i was telling you how my father, blessed be his memory was bored, excuse me, was varied with his rose bowl ring on. You tell me that story. He said well, ive got to tell you something. You got me thinking about the 1942 rose bowl and i wanted to go online advice and memorabilia from from a kids and grandkids. So my children and i went online and we started googling and wend on ebay and there is a rose bowl ring for sale. They just want my heart if hes telling a story that it meant so much to him that he wanted to buy thee ring. But then he said, we looked at the rate more closely emulates dads rating. He said i dont understand. He said many years ago m there d 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 he had been buried with the ring on, in actuality, someone had stolen the ring and was selling it for thousands of dollars on ebay. He and his family cobbled up enough money. Theyve gone to the authorities or the authority said the dirt the statute of limitations are gone, et cetera appeared to harbor since gathered together money and bought his ring back in us back in their possession. This theme of rings kept coming up to my research for this book. What started out as an article for sportser illustrated in te summer of 2013 and a debt the 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. He really is a story of a young group of men and what sacrifice means and what service means and what happens when you come home for more. So, i was struggling to find my next book topic about four or five years ago. Ive been a year since i last spoke. I was reading the news the rose bowl put out in there is little facts section and they said did you know the only rose bowl game never to be played t in pasadena was played in dorm, North Carolina in 1842. As a former Sports Reporter and sports author of a shock id never come across that little known fact. So i did what historians and researchers have done for centuries and they went to google and i typed in 1942 rose bowl. There was then a tremendous amount of Research Done on it, but what few articles i read, i was fascinated by how this granddaddy of them all at transplanted from pasadena over to duram, North Carolina and that is what started to peak my interest in this story. What i didnt know at the time that i wrote the Sports Illustrated story and certainly i didnt know during my research is that the 80 man who coached and participated in the game, only one is still with us today. If i w had written this book 30r 40 years ago, it probably wouldve been a completely differentpl book. I literally had to reconstruct a story of men 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. So i would be online reading an obituary in trying to find the name of a son or daughter now it finally trackedau him down after two or three months, introduce myself on the phone and say mrs. Parker, my name is bryan curtis. Im writing this book. To talk to you about your dad in world war ii and the rose bowl. Most of them would get emotional immediacy and say brian, we would like to tell you this story, but we dont know because dad never talked about were in dad never talked about the rose bowl. We knew he played in the rose bowl, but we dont know much. As excited as i was kicked to track down his Family Members, it was equally disappointing to understand they could not be helpful to c me. It would get on a plane and go to work in a small towns of jefferson in albany and hoodff river and a limit on theut outskirts of ceylon and try to collect as much information that it could from longlost cousins are from local libraries for the archives of oregon state and similarly doing the same thing at Duke University where i found purse the letters written home from the waterfront that literally probably have not been touched since they were donated to the archives. Partf of the project was piecing together military a files, academic transcripts, what little newspaper stories they were about this game in 42 through 44 and then coming up with a narrative. One of b the blessings for me in doing this project is that i have been able to educate the families about their dad and their grandparents. I can tell them where they went to his school. I can tell them what classes they took a college. A lot of them got decent maps. And i was not shy about passing that information on as well. All those stories about how they worked hard. Your dad washe and is hard as yu thought. [laughter] but i was also able for many of them to get a hold of their full military files so we knew when they enlisted in what shape they shipped w out on him again, it s beauty for me because even though i couldve used 80 or 9 of the a information i was ableo pass it on to the families that have a little bit closer to mom and dad. So really, this is about building this dory about a group of men who played in this now remarkable game and ended up coincidences in the battlefield. What really hooked me on befitted research to discover the story of Charles Haynes and frankfr barber appeared Charles Haynes played for Duke University, grew up a couple blocks from campus, and allamerican rest are in boy scout and everybody in the room knew him. He enrolled at duke. He didnt play much on the Football Team, but he suited up and played in the game. Well, shortly aftertl the game, haynes found himself in the army. He tried to enlist a couple times earlier in the air force, but his eyesight had prevented him from becoming a pilot. So he invents a Flash Forward two years from the game in 1944 and a thriving in the hills of italy against the germans. It just so happens a month before overt the 19th, 44, hes had an encampment of the front lines and is talking to a gentleman named frank parker. Frank parker happened to play in that same rose bowl game before 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 toto speak. They both are leaders in the platoons in one of their job was to be up the hill. Imagine charging up a hill, knowing the enemy is on the other side. You are the first sitting dozens if not hundreds of men charging that the random played number two in one day october 4, 1944, charges that the hill and as he makes progress, and theres no bullets coming his way. Theres no bombs. You can believe it. He keeps going further and further. He had the apex of the hill when the germans openedns fire. They rip open holes in his legs. He gets shot in the chest in england about the size of a solid ball is in his chest. Bullets are flying. His fellow soldiers cant get in to pick them up off the battlefield, so hes laying there, bleeding out to death. He says prayers for his mom, he thinks about his parents back home in duram, he says his goodbyes and closes his eyes. It starts to rain, then it starts to snow appeared an hour goes by, two hours, five hours, seven hours. 17 hours he lay dying in the snow and mud on this hill and italy until someone grabsli his arm. Charles, charles, wake up. Wakeke up. Charles barely opens up his eyes. He still alive at this point. And who does he see . He sees frank parker and frank parker, the man who played against him on the football field twol years earlier with help from another soldier picked up his bloody body, carried him down the hillnh under gunfire coming gets into a medical tent. Its eventually transferredom to house killing naples in Charles Haynes makes a full recovery. Frank parker after taking him to the medical tent turned around immediately and went back up the the saved other lives over the next 244 hours. Charles haynes gets released. Imagine almost dying on that hill in a few months later hes back on the front lines because we needed bodies as americans at war. Frank parker in Charles Haynes create ar friendship. They say goodbye in may of 1945 in the austrian alps. They say in such a little bit when they get back in the states but never laid eyes on s each other until approximately 1991. It was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the rose t bowl game and the folks at oregon state wanted to recognize their only rose bowl champion. So they hosted a banquet for whoever was still remaining and able toai attend. They also invited any of their opponents who had played against them at duke and they were just a handful of duke players who came, but one of them was Charles Haynes in Charles Haynes said, i know we at duke are going to host their own reunion inos a month, but i cant wait o see them in his saved my life. I need to see if hes still alive. Charles haynes traveledd from duram out to oregon and as they read about in the introduction of the book, sure enough he starts weeping as he looks across the room and sees the man that saved hisoo life. Four weeks later, frank parker and his wife traveled to duram and the same kind of reunion takess place in until their death, the men stay in touch. Charles haynes went through a couple marriages in his last partner,r, girlfriend milt may last year many of his last possessions, including some of the kids frank parker had given to Charles Haynes. I wrote about the two men in this book because few are two guys, one dirt poor from oregon, one who had lost his father at the age of 11 or 12 in a car accident. His uncle married his mother. He had to work all through high school and college just to make ends meet in here is Charles Haynes in duram, middle upper class family, father was an executive of the American Tobacco company. They both go off in war. They both killed dozens of men. They both get awarded medals for service in action but theyom coe home to america and their allies could not be more different. Charles haynes was a war hero, open up a restaurant, had fun, took spanish in cooking classes at Duke University with friends with Mike Scioscia ski was known for Walking Around in full duke with alea. Open a company, was very successful, frank parker moves back to oregon, the state and italy in extra year after the war. He couldnt y go home to face hs lifetime sweetheart in life yet he thought he had fundamentally changed is the man because of the horrors that he saw in 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 fisherman, never went back to complete his college education. Lived his life on the seat, 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 at the house of in kodiak, alaska and then in portland, oregon where for the first time after the d. , 60 years who started to open up and talk about some of the demons off wa. Many other players in the game came home suffered from drug abuse and alcoholism. Sin committed suicide. We talk about the greatest generation and in my eyes, they all are. But we think about her rates and homecoming and the men who were really boys sent to violence in places far away, struggled with this the rest of their lives. Part of fields of battle, what started as the rose bowl from one city to another and it to another ended up being a story about how boys go to war. My own curiosity kept it from ending the war because i said to myself, what happened to these guys when they got home . Did they become teachers . Get more impact them . Did football remained a piece of their life . Im a former sports broadcaster and those of you who follow sports, you often hear broadcasters use war metaphors when talking aboutut sports. Its 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 realize how silly that is because war is nothing like the all. And what i learned is that these boys, as eager as some of them were to sign up to 19, 20, 21 years old thought that war was again. They thought war would be just the above because the coaches what they meant, going fight hard and had strong. All itnd took was an hour and battlese for these young boys to realize that war is nothing in common in football. As a side note, some of the lessons they learned on the football field could certainly help them in war over common adversity, getting knocked down and getting right back on your feet. The tough get going when toughness faces them in theires account was raised not only what these players, but other athletes who fought and were talking about the lessons he learned on the sports field kept them alive. So it is a triumph stories in ways. We won the war for those o