America in WWII - (Page 2) WWII September-October 2007 Volume Three • Number Three EDITOR AND PUBLISHER AM E RICA I N A KILROY WAS HERE James P. Kushlan MANAGING EDITOR Open the Door to the Past I REMEMBER DISCOVERING HISTORY as a nine-year-old. It was 1969, and I had just returned to America with my family after living in Spain, where my dad was stationed at an air force base outside Madrid. I was excited to be back in a country where Get Smart was in English, the words finally matching the lip movements. But I soon found something even more fascinating: the American Civil War. My mom was shocked when I asked to get up at 6 A.M. on some of my summer vacation days so I could watch a public TV show on the war. The truth is, I retained very little of what the professor who hosted the program said. But I loved the opening music (a stirring performance of “Garryowen”), the old lithographs of war scenes, and the artifacts the professor came up with. In the end, what I retained was a fascination with history, its images, and its artifacts. The mid- to late-1960s were a golden age for popular history—history communicated in a way that interested ordinary people, not just scholars. It was easy to feed my new-found interest with the books, magazines, museums, living history sites, and television programs (especially You Are There) that seemed to multiply daily. I came to realize that what most interested me was the way people lived in the past, what they experienced, and how they dealt with it and felt about it. I enjoyed finding common ground with the people of 50, 100, and 5,000 years ago, and I still do. I guess it’s no surprise I ended up in a career focused on telling the human stories of the past. Of course, none of this would have happened if I hadn’t had a dad who loved history, or inspiring teachers who tried to help me connect with the past and its people. Clearly, adults have a lot of power to open doors for kids, to help them discover things that will enrich them and perhaps even become their vocation. You can’t— or at least you shouldn’t—force a young person to share your interests. But you can make them aware of things you have come to value, and let them discover them for themselves. I hope you’ll consider sharing your own knowledge and experience of history with young people. Show them the pictures and things of the past, especially your past—tell them your stories. You’ll be surprised to find that what you think is ordinary, nothing special, will fascinate and inspire them. It is my fascination with the experiences of my mom and dad in the 1940s that impelled me to start this very magazine! Carl Zebrowski ART & DESIGN DIRECTOR J.L. King CARTOGRAPHER David Deis, Dreamline Cartography CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Eric Ethier • Tom Huntington Brian John Murphy • Joe Razes EDITORIAL OFFICES PO Box 4175, Harrisburg, PA 17111-0175 717-564-0161 (phone and fax), editor@americainwwii.com ADVERTISING Sales Representatives Marsha Blessing 717-433-7985, mblessing@americainwwii.com Tammy Miller 717-362-8006, tmiller@americainwwii.com Ad Management & Production Services Marsha Blessing, Orison Publishers 717-433-7985, ads@americainwwii.com CIRCULATION Circulation and Marketing Director Heidi Kushlan 717-564-0161, hkushlan@americainwwii.com A Publication of 310 PUBLISHING, LLC CEO Heidi Kushlan EDITORIAL DIRECTOR James P. Kushlan AMERICA IN WWII (ISSN 1554-5296) is published bimonthly by 310 Publishing LLC, 310 Kelso Street, Harrisburg, PA 17111-1825. Periodicals postage paid at Harrisburg, PA. SUBSCRIPTION RATE: One year (six issues) $24.45; outside the U.S., $30.45 in U.S. funds. Customer service: call toll-free 866-525-1945 (U.S. & Canada), or write AMERICA IN WWII, P.O. Box 1945, Mt. Morris, IL 61054, or visit online at www.americainwwii.com. POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO AMERICA IN WWII, P.O. BOX 1945, MT. MORRIS, IL 61054. Copyright 2007 by 310 Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this issue may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission of the publisher. Address letters, War Stories, and GIs correspondence to: Editor, AMERICA IN WWII, PO Box 4175, Harrisburg, PA 17111-0175. Letters to the editor become the property of AMERICA IN WWII and may be edited. Submission of text and images for War Stories and GIs gives AMERICA IN WWII the right to edit, publish, and republish them in any form or medium. No unsolicited article manuscripts, please: query first. AMERICA IN WWII does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of advertisements or letters to the editor that appear herein. © 2007 by 310 Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION: Toll-free 1-866-525-1945 or www.americainwwii.com PRINTED IN THE IN WWII FRY O B E R 2 0 0 6 2 AMERICA USA BY O C T COMMUNICATIONS MECHANICSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA James P. Kushlan Editor and Publisher, America in WWII http://www.americainwwii.com/ http://www.americainwwii.com/
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