About the Author

My father died unexpectedly when I was just 15 years old in 1953. Months earlier my grandfather had died. This was a tough time for me and for my family. My mother, my brother and I moved into my grandfather’s vacant house. There was a tiny upstairs storage room. That is where I discovered the 89 year old (at time) Congressional Report on the “Massacre of Fort Pillow” published in 1864.

It was all about men dying for absolutely no reason. Which was exactly what was on my mind at the time. Why do good men die? I read it cover to cover. I learned something important about the Civil War that I had never heard talked about. In ten years, 1964, the 100th Anniversary of the Massacre of Fort Pillow came and went and nothing new was said about why the Massacre happened. Forty years later in the early-2000’s I would still occasionally think of what I had learned. I curiously went on-line and on the Tennessee State Parks website I found this: “Controversy surrounding the battle still exists today”.

I imagine that statement is no longer there today. But the fact that in the 2000’s there was a “Controversy” puzzled me. I felt people needed to hear the first person testimony of the survivors of the Battle at Fort Pillow as I had heard them when I was 15 years old. There was no controversy. It was pretty obvious what had happened.

I began to suspect I was probably the only living person who had read that 1864 Congressional Report!

About this time, I attended a business meeting in the rented 19^th Century Woodland Opera House in Woodland, California. As I sat high up in the seats of this beautiful hall, the purpose of the meeting left me as I realized the Fort Pillow Massacre needed to be a stage play! I had never written a stage play, I have no interest in becoming a playwright, but I set about writing this play. It needed to be done.

One look at the nine documents under “The Play” tab will tell you I am not a traditional playwright; I am an engineer. I have given you all the elements to build a stage play to explore with your audience a fascinating true event in our American history.

That is a picture of me, with my wife Anne, sitting in our backyard on our 50^th Wedding Anniversary. It’s not too late. You can give us the wonderful gift of producing The Fort Pillow Massacre stage play.