RFK Book Signing and Lectures

I will be signing copies of my book Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday, October 4, at the Indiana Historical Bureau's bookshop in the Indiana State Library and Historical Building, 315 West Ohio Street, Room 130, in Indianapolis. All books in the shop wll be 20 percent off during this event.

Joining me that day will be another Hoosier author, Geoffrey Paddock, who will be signing copies of his new book, Indiana Political Heroes, recently released by the Indiana Historical Society Press.

Visit the Historical Bureau Web site at http://www.in.gov/history/7758.htm or call 317-232-2535 to place pre-orders and assure that you get a copy of the featured books. There will be limited book quantities at the book signing.

I will also be giving a series of talks on the Kennedy book at a variety of Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library branches in October. The schedule of the talks are as follows:

* Wayne Branch Library, 198 S. Girls School Road, Thursday, October 9, 7 p.m.

* Spades Park Branch, 1801 Nowland Avenue, Thursday, October 16, 7 p.m.

* Central Library, Knall Meeting Room, 40 E. Saint Clair Street, Sunday, October 19, 2 p.m.

* Pike Branch, 6525 Zionsville Road, Thursday, October 23, 7 p.m.

In addition, I will be talking about Kennedy's Indiana campaign, and selling and signing copies of the book, at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 14, at the Hussey-Mayfield Memorial Public Library, 250 North Fifth Street, in Zionsville. The program, free and open to the public, will be in the library's Lora Hussey and Olive Hoffman Rooms.

Finally, I will also give a lecture on RFK at 7 p.m. on Monday, October 20, for the Knox County Public Library in Vincennes, Indiana. The free program will be held at the Fortnightly Auditorium at 421 North Sixth Street.

Grissom and RFK Talks

At 7 p.m. on Monday, September 8, I will be discussing the Apollo 1 tragedy and the life of the mission's commander, Gus Grissom, at the Lawrence County Museum of History and the Edward L. Hutton Research Library, 929 15th Street, Bedford, Indiana.

On Friday, January 27, 1967, NASA engaged in yet another step on the long journey to the moon by attempting a simulated countdown of the three-man Apollo spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center's Pad 34. At one o'clock in the afternoon astronauts Roger Chaffee, a rookie and the youngest person ever selected to join the astronaut corps; Ed White, the first American to walk in space; and Mitchell, Indiana, native Grissom, the first American to fly in space twice; entered the Apollo command module, built by North American Aviation. They never made it out alive.

The Apollo 1 lecture if free and open to the public. For more information, contact Lucy Hawkins at (812) 279-8575.

In addition to the Apollo 1 lecture, at 7 p.m. on Thursday, September 11, I will be at the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris Public Library, 209 Lincoln Way East, Mishawaka, to talk about my book Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary for the library's American Heritage Roundtable. For more information, call Dave Eisen at 259-5277, ext. 300.

Best Books of Indiana Winners

Congratulations to Margaret McMullan, author of the book When I Crossed No-Bob, for winning the children's/young adult category in the Indiana Center for the Book's annual Best Books of Indiana contest. McMullan's work beat out my youth biography of May Wright Sewall and Julie Young's biography of Saint Theodora Guerin, both published by the Indiana Historical Society Press.

Winners in other categories included Susan Neville in non-fiction for her book Sailing the Inland Sea, published by Quarry Books, and Kirk Curnutt in fiction for his book Breathing Out the Ghost, published by River City Publishing.

The Center did an impressive job with the award ceremony, held on Saturday, August 16, in the Indiana Authors Room at the Indiana State Library. Each category's winning title and author will be engraved on a plaque in the Indiana Authors Room. Two copies of all 2008 competition entries have been added to the State Library's collection. One copy of each entry will circulate. Indiana citizens can borrow any Best Books of Indiana title at the State Library or request it via interlibrary loan at their local public library.

Article on Bushemi Book

The Gary Post-Tribune in its Sunday "Neighbors" section featured an article on my recent talk at the Lake County Public Library on famed World War II photographer John A. Bushemi.

American GIs and marines (like the ones captured here by Bushemi sharpening their K-Bar knives) who participated in the invasions of such far-flung Pacific Ocean locations as New Georgia, Makin, Tarawa, Kwajalein, and Eniwetok during World War II could always count on a blistering reception from the Japanese forces defending those isles. They could also depend on their efforts being documented for their fellow soldiers and folks back home by Bushemi.

Assigned to Yank, the weekly magazine written by and for enlisted men, Bushemi specialized in "photography from a rifle’s length vantage point," according to his colleague Merle Miller. His work with his ever-present Speed Graphic camera earned Bushemi the distinction of being the "outstanding combat photographer" for the magazine, noted its managing editor Joe McCarthy. That distinction came as no surprise to those who knew Bushemi in Gary, where he had received numerous awards for his work as a photographer for the Gary Post-Tribune. While working for the newspaper, he had earned the nickname "One Shot" for his uncanny ability to capture even the fastest action with just one click of his camera’s shutter

Sewall Book Honored in Best Books Competition

Just received word today that my youth biography Fighting for Equality: A Life of May Wright Sewall, published by the Indiana Historical Society Press, is a finalist in the children/young adult category of the 2008 Best Books of Indiana Competition sponsored annually by the Indiana Center for the Book.

The other two finalists in the category are Julie Young for her book A Belief in Providence: A Life of Saint Theodora Guérin, also published by the IHS Press, and Margaret McMullan for When I Crossed No-Bob, published by Houghton Mifflin.

This competition began in 2005 to highlight Indiana's ongoing literary successes. Books by Indiana authors or about Indiana, published between January 1 and December 31 of the previous year are eligible. In addition to the children/young adult category, other categories include fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.

This is the third time one of my youth biographies has been named a finalist in the Best Books of Indiana competition. Both The Soldier's Friend: A Life of Ernie Pyle and The Sword & the Pen: A Life of Lew Wallace, failed to win. Perhaps the third time will be the charm when the winners are announced in a 1 p.m. Saturday, August 16, ceremony at the Indiana State Library.

Gus Grissom and Liberty Bell 7

On this date in 1961 Hoosier astronaut Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom became the second American and the third human to rocket into space as a Redstone rocket blasted his Libert Bell 7 spacecraft into a suborbital flight lasting approximately fifteen minutes.

Grissom's flight, however, is best known today for what happened after he successfully splashdowned in the Atlantic Ocean. As I noted in my biography of Grissom, written as part of the Indiana Historical Society Press's Indiana Biography Series, the astronaut was lying flat on his back waiting for the helicopter’s call that it had hooked onto the spacecraft, Grissom turned his attention for a second to the knife he had placed in his survival pack, wondering if he could carry it out with him as a souvenir instead of leaving it in the spacecraft. “I heard the hatch blow—the noise was a dull thud—and looked up to see blue sky out the hatch and water start to spill over the doorsill,” he told National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials. Acting on instinct, Grissom quickly tossed his helmet to the floor, grabbed the right side of the instrument panel, and exited the spacecraft. “I have never moved faster in my life,” he noted. “The next thing I knew I was floating high in my suit with the water up to my armpits.”

Inside NASA there existed “two vehement camps” with opinions on what happened. One side believed Grissom had either panicked or hit the switch by accident, causing the hatch to blow. Another faction pointed to some unknown problem with the machine and held the astronaut blameless for the accident.

The debate on the question of whether or not Grissom was to blame for the hatch’s firing seemed about to be put to rest for good in May 1999 when Curt Newport, whose twin passions as a child had been spaceflight and undersea exploration, found the long-abandoned spacecraft on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. In July, Newport, joined by Guenter Wendt, a German engineer known as the "Pad Leader" by American astronauts and Jim Lewis, the helicopter pilot on the original Liberty Bell 7 recovery, returned to the site and, at 2:15 a.m. July 20—thirty-eight years almost to the day it had been blasted into space—hoisted the capsule off of the ocean floor and onto the deck of the ship Ocean Project.

As a restoration team at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center cleaned and reassembled the spacecraft’s 27,000 separate parts, they discovered some intriguing material to help the case that Grissom had not panicked on his flight and prematurely blown the hatch. The museum team, which completed its work in March 2000, discovered Grissom’s waterlogged checklist, which had been about a third of the way completed before the hatch blew. “As far as I’m concerned, that checklist pretty much cleared Grissom of any wrongdoing in connection to what happened,” said John Glass, who supervised the capsule’s restoration at the Cosmosphere.

In addition, Greg “Buck” Buckingham, a key figure in the restoration effort, pointed out that there were no burn marks from the explosive cord that had been intended to trigger the hatch’s release. If the explosive cord never detonated, Buckingham theorized that the spacecraft had slammed hatch-down into the ocean when it returned to earth, causing a titanium strip along the hatch sill to buckle and the seventy explosive bolts to fire one by one. “Most telltale to me are the lack of burn marks,” said Buckingham.

Interview on Kennedy Book

The Indiana University Press Blog features an interview with me about my book Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary.

The interview includes a frequent question I receive when talking about the book, namely, what would an RFK administration would have been like if he had lived and won the 1968 general election against Richard Nixon? I always point out that Kennedy faced an uphill battle to win the Democratic nomination that year from Vice President Hubert Humphrey. A different perspective is offered by Mitchell J. Freedman, author of the book A Disturbance of Fate, which is an alternative history where Kennedy narrowly misses being assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan and goes on to win the 1968 election.

In addition to the IU Press Blog interview, I will be speaking about my RFK book at 7 p.m. on Monday, August 25, at the Hancock County Public Library, 900 W McKenzie Road, Greenfield, Indiana. The program is free and open to the public. For more information, call the library at (317) 462-5141.