On May 31st, 1889. the South Fork dam broke releasing a wall of water hurtling down the valley to Johnstown, PA. On this episode I am once again joined by Elizabeth Shope from the Johnstown Flood National Memorial. We discuss the South Fork fishing and hunting club who was the owner of the lake at the time of the disaster. We discuss some of the powerful members like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick. We also discuss the fate of the club in the weeks and months following the Flood.

Today I am joined by Darin and Mary from the Civil War Breakfast Club podcast. We spent our time talking about obscure, Unknown, Interesting, And even funny stories from the American Civil War!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/civil-war-breakfast-club/id1531574799

Robert B. O’Connor is the author of the extraordinary new WWII novel "Jeep Show – A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge." His previous book was the non-fiction "Gumptionade – A Booster for Your Self-Improvement Plan." Two radically different books, both about morale.

As a young man, Robert was Phi Beta Kappa at Kenyon College, a marketing executive at Procter & Gamble, then co-owner of an advertising agency. By his own account, he took a hard fall.

As he was helped up off the mat, Robert came across a quote from the nineteenth-century British biologist Thomas Huxley: “Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.” Robert wrote Gumptionade to help himself and his readers recognize what needed to be done in their lives, and how to do it.

In 1967, promoter and impresario Jim Hetzer, the inspiration for the protagonist in "Jeep Show," convinced Oxydol detergent to sponsor a circus. The result was a marketing disaster, humorous in retrospect.

In 1944, Hetzer enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the Morale Corps as an Entertainment Specialist. He was attached to a Jeep show squad in the European Theatre of Operations.

Jeep shows were small variety shows done for combat troops in forward areas too dangerous for the USO or the Red Cross. Hetzer often worked with Private Mickey Rooney.

Jim Hetzer’s story inspired O’Connor to write Jeep Show, now a BookLife Editor’s Choice selection. Kirkus reviews wrote: “It seems odd to call a World War II novel 'delightful,' but that's exactly what you get with O'Connor's mix of history and fiction as battles rage on and enlisted men entertain the troops.”