Reading, Eating, Working and Thinking About Sunshine

For several years I was blessed with the good fortune to accompany some old friends on a Florida golfing trip during this week in February. Our annual outing to Sanford, Florida was a pleasant break from this miserable excuse for a climate up here in the Hoosier State. Like most things, people change and time passes and after awhile this trip became a thing of the past. Now I stay up here in the cold country and work like a mule through the winter, just hoping that I survive until I can once again feel the sun's warming rays beating down upon my golf game.

So what does an Ol Simmons do to pass the time when he's not slaving away at the salt mines? By the looks of me, it appears that I've done nothing but eat. Actually, I have eaten rather well this winter and, at the present time, I see no end in sight to my record setting caloric intake. While I'm not working or eating, I am usually reading books or trying to harvest every possible tidbit of historical information from the internet. If the truth be known, and I think it should, I often read while I'm eating and vice versa.

So what has the old boy read recently that's any good? That's what this article is all about, just a few recommendations on what I found to be some good reading. My most recent efforts were two books by David Halberstam, "Everything They Had" and "The Best American Sports Writing of the Century". Halberstam was one of my very favorite authors and has authored books on sports, society/economics/politics and the military with seemingly equal ease and quality. These two books are similar in that they are anthologies of Halberstam's and other sports writers' essays from years gone by. If you are much of a sports enthusiast, I'm fairly sure that you would enjoy both of these books. I'm just starting the last book that Halberstam finished, "The Coldest Winter", which is about the Korean War. Unfortunately, we lost David Halberstam in a car wreck last July while on his way to interview Y.A. Tittle. The interview with Tittle was arranged as part of his research for his next book, "The Glory Game: How the 1958 NFL Championship Changed Football Forever." This book was completed by his good friend Frank Gifford.

I also just finished an outstanding book, "Five Years to Freedom", by Nick Rowe. Lt. Nick Rowe, USMA Class of 1960, was captured along with Captain Rocky Versace in South Vietnam in 1963. Through five years of survival as a POW, Nick kept a cryptic diary that he later used after his escape to write this engrossing account of what he had to endure. This book explains in detail how the National Liberation Front (NLF) tried for 5 years to re-educate Nick and his fellow captives and get them to denounce their own country and to accept the NLF's policies. It is a wonderful book that describes the relationships between the fellow POWs and between the POWs and their NLF guards and cadre. Rocky Versace, Medal of Honor recipient, was executed by the cadre of the NLF while he was a POW and Nick Rowe was killed in an ambush in 1989, 20 years after his escape from Vietnam, by Communist guerillas in the Philippines.

Finally, I have also finished reading "The Class of 1846" by John Waugh, which describes the lives and relationships of some special West Point classmates from the class of 1846, who later fought against each other in the Civil War. After having spent 4 years at the Academy, I know how close and personal these relationships can become and this book describes these friendships dating back from before the war, during the war and for some, after the war. Some of these classmates included; George McClellan, A.P. Hill, George Pickett, Truman Seymour, Stonewall Jackson, Darius Crouch, and George Stoneman, all General Officers for either the North or South during the Civil War.

Truman Seymour was always a favorite of mine, maybe because of the name, maybe just because of his character and his story. Seymour was an artist and had returned to West Point in 1850 as an instructor of drawing under the renowned Robert Weir. Seymour wound up marrying Weir's daughter Louisa in 1852. At the start of the Civil War, we see Seymour along with Major Robert Anderson and Abner Doubleday being bombarded at Ft. Sumter, later getting captured during the Battle of the Wilderness, being exchanged as a POW and also commanding the Union forces at the Battle of Olustee (also known as the Battle of Ocean Pond), the largest Civil War battle in the State of Florida. Truman and Louisa Seymour lived in Europe after the war and he painted up until his death in Florence, Italy in 1891.

As a side note, the opposing commander to Seymour at Ocean Pond was General Joseph Finegan. In 1842, Joseph Finegan purchased 5 miles of shoreline on Lake Monroe for just $40 at an auction. After the war, he sold this property to a gentleman by the name of Henry Shelton Sanford and Old Henry founded what is now Sanford, Florida. Sanford is a great place to go play golf in the winter, if you're not too busy working, eating and reading.