About the Author: Steve Hawks

Steve Hawks has spent 30 years implementing technology in business communications and applying that technology to his love of history. He was a founding partner in a pioneering computer training company and the author of one of the first commercial CD-ROMs, a documentary on the battle of Gettysburg. He has produced several history web sites, is an Adjunct Instructor at the Seidman School of Business at Grand Valley State University, and is authoring a series of books on the monuments of Gettysburg and Antietam. He will happily ride a train anywhere at any time and can become dangerously excited at the prospect of historical aircraft, trains, and ships. When he isn't hiking in the Rockies or wandering around a Civil War battlefield he lives near Grand Rapids, Michigan.

When I was growing up there was a battered old jacket hanging behind the water heater in the laundry room. Dad used it for dirty jobs in the garage or outside, but I loved it for its sergeant's chevrons and its other patches. In spite of its lowly status I was only allowed to try it on under supervision, and then only briefly. The jacket rotted away some time after it became too small for me to fit into, but long before that Mother had wisely removed the patches for historical safekeeping.

Looking at 'the army jacket' would sometimes lead to a careful exploration of a treasure trove of campaign ribbons, photographs, and other memorabilia stored away in a secure closet. And these would always lead Dad to some stories.

Dad was a good storyteller, and he loved telling them. Their details were always consistent and Dad was often a minor character or just an observer, which led me to believe that they might actually be true. (Some of these can be found at Skydozer.com.) Years later, when my research led me to someone - a stranger to Dad - who collaborated the details of one of the stories, I was very happy.

So I learned at an early age that history wasn't just something that happened in books to people you'd never meet. History was about people that might well be your family and neighbors. You could find it in a closet or hanging behind a water heater.

I found out that history was all around me. People had lived for thousands of years where I grew up, a place where a major trail crossed a large river at its first upstream ford. A mission was built in the 1600's, then a fort that was fought over and eventually flew the flags of four nations. It is a story that you might think of happening someplace far away, but is unexpected and even startling for a small town in Michigan.

The area sent its sons to the Civil War, and it left a deep mark on the community that reached down through the years to touch me. Its cemetery is home to three colonels. One commanded the 24th Michigan at Gettysburg, taking the regiment's flag when the last of its color guard were shot down as the Iron Brigade fought to the death on Seminary Ridge. His brother in law lies in a neighboring plot, killed leading his regiment in the horrible furnace of The Wilderness. Afterwards his proud and grieving family displayed his sword in the window of their store on the main street of town, a place within a stone's throw of the building where I was born. And to show that not all men are heroes, a short distance away in the cemetery beneath a simple government-issue stone lies a man who the Governor of Michigan called "the worst colonel I ever knew," who ran away in the opening minutes of Shiloh and was hounded out of his regiment's first reunion.

I hope you enjoy these web sites. I want to thank those of you who have taken the time to write me with your comments, your corrections, or just your appreciation. Thanks also to the many people who have helped me put these sites together, who showed me around your land, took me to places I didn't know about, or gave me needed encouragement and support. Thanks to those of you who support this site by clicking on the ads and buying the books, calendars and coffee mugs that help pay the way. And most of all, thanks to those men and women whose stories these monuments tell. In so many ways, these sites would not be possible without you.