Who, When, Why What

[L Verge]

I was fortunate to be raised with a mother and grandmother who both loved all types of history - and a father who tolerated it enough to go for Sunday drives or weekends that encompassed some form of history. In the D.C./Southern Maryland area that was easy. I think the Civil War era intrigued me the most from the very beginning when I really learned what a CIVIL WAR entailed. That was also aided by the fact that my grandmother was born less than a decade after the war and grew up with people who had fought in the war or had loved ones die in the war.

Many of you know the story of how I became obsessed with the Lincoln assassination when I was about ten years old and watched my mother clean the attic (that was chocked full of family stuff dating to my great-grandparents' arrival in the house in T.B. in 1862). The John Surratt nightshirt was pulled out of an old wicker laundry basket, and I first heard the story of it, Davy Herold, and riders in the night. That would have been about 1952, I think, because it happened while my dad was overseas fighting in Korea.

I became obsessed with the assassination story and the Civil War in general thanks to good television shows and sentimental movies like GWTW, Shenandoah, and even Elvis's Love Me Tender. I read everything I could get my hands on. I even attribute my love of murder mysteries to my first love of the assassination mystery.

As I have said before, I am one of those fortunate people who has turned my avocation into my vocation. It just makes it a little nicer to get a paycheck. Little did I know that evening in October of 1975, when Joan Chaconas and I joined the Surratt Society and panicked at the thought of sewing a period costume, that the assassination would become my everyday life. I wouldn't trade it for anything. The wealth of information and friendships that I have garnered through my love of this history is immense and truly keeps this old gal chugging along.

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Jim G - I just read your last paragraph, and it did me in! I knew you had lost a child, but I didn't know the circumstances; and the way you have merged your daughter's death with the realities of the assassination is very comforting. Thanks for sharing such personal feelings.