Lecture Date: February 9, 2016
The lecture is based on Groom’s book The Aviators (his seventeenth) published in 2013. It is the story of Eddie Rickenbacker, James Doolittle, and Charles Lindbergh -- three extraordinary Americans who between the two world wars pushed the limits of flight and redefined heroism through their genius, daring, and uncommon courage. The lecture will tell their intertwined stories -- from broken homes to Medals of Honor (all three would receive them); barnstorming to the greatest raid of World War II; front-page triumph to anguished tragedy; and near death to ultimate survival -- as all three took the sky, time and again, to become exemplars of the spirit of the “greatest generation.”
Speaker: Winston Groom
Winston Groom was born in Washington D.C. and raised in Alabama. He attended the University of Alabama, where he was a member of the Army ROTC, which led to a tour of duty in the Vietnam War. Upon his return from Vietnam, he worked at a reporter for the Washington Star newspaper before turning his hand to writing novels. The best known of those works, published in 1986, was Forrest Gump. The movie based on that novel, starring Tom Hanks in the title role, propelled the book to best-seller status; it eventually sold 1.7 million copies worldwide. Groom currently devotes his time to writing history books, mainly about American wars.