Lee Roddy’s Blog

I’m writing this after an inspiring trip to Washington, DC, and Gettysburg, Pennslyvania.  On 10-17-09, my wife and I celebrated our 62nd wedding anniversary with cups of airline coffee during a two-hour delay, waiting for the United Airlines flight to leave Sacramento for the Washington/Dulles Airport.

I have already blogged about what an incredible woman I married, so if you want to re–read that, it’s in the archives under Blog#2, Noble Wife.

It was our first trip to the nation’s capital and Gettysburg, but Steve, our school teacher son, had traveled to both places before, so he accompanied us and greatly enriched our experience.

 I  had long wanted to visit both  areas,  especially so now that I’m well into writing another Civil War novel.

To help add authentic details to my story, I needed to walk where my fictitious characters walked;  to mentally live as they lived, and to feel what they felt in their anguished times of bloody war that started graves in Arlington where  more than 345 thousand are now buried. I needed to sit in Ford’s Theater and hear the single shot from the box where President Lincoln was assassinated just days after the war ended.

I got that and more, along with sudden lumps in my throat and tears that seeped, unbidden, under my eye lids. I pray that the emotions I felt there can be transfered to the printed page so my readers may vicariously share what real people did in that horrble conflict between the states.

To better appreciate our American heritage, I urge everyone who has not been to Washington DC , Arlington National Cemetery and the Gettysburg Battlefield to put them on a ‘must do” wish list — and then to work hard to make it happen.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 11:22 am and is filed under Lee's Personal Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.