A Word on Words; 3530; Susan Lentz

it's been liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on words the south johnson and all once again welcome to word on words i guess today is to them and is here to talk about her new book atlas says and welcome to world war thank you for having the great having

you to talk about kenneth katzman is a name that one party or life for a long time selling area always center lucero you never met guinness you want but you know i'm so well he was your mother's true love he once and beyond that that he was they never married but he was your mother's drew talk a little bit about about those early days when you and assist through difficult with your mile driving from those of the tunnel and she would talk to him while she talked about anything that would keep this quiet for hours during mississippi and north carolina that eventually we would began to just bitter infighting and she would tell us these long stories in a monotone until we all kind of

drifted off but that was our favorite because we were also enamored of him so in love with him ourselves because her mother was in and not enough a sad way because she was happily married she picked up her life in and went on in yes and and she married and made a good life for herself and all that but she didn't just forget him because he was dead either he was calm had been an important part of her life his family was important to her and is she just he was always he always had a place you know and in our lives and it was fascinating for three little girls because he seemed like such an a prince charming to us you know he was he was so handsome and so smart in and just you know beyond thought in having a loan for just seven years and then lost him in but never lost and then this book means that he's never going to be lost hopefully i think that's right you know let's

just set the scene for our audience a little bit here and there in north carolina he's in scotland but you're your mother's and north carolina and on his father's own psychology department who converged becomes terribly ill with cancer your mother a nurse caring for kenneth is in scotland and he loves scotland but knows his mother isn't all know that his role as angus in assisted living out there he was his own and they care for the other end of the process on the piano and fall deeply and well and unfortunately it's a time will come you know in talking to you about how to get into oh it we would know as in her things at first then and now and dad don't remember when i heard about him for the first time because i don't ever remember not knowing about him he just was a part of our life

in the fifties there wasn't that so much competition for your time if it was a rainy day and we couldn't go outside and we would smoke brandon dress up and do all the things all girls do and she just had a treasure trove of things to snoop through as she did have him marie box and it was an incredible thing and it's there i love that box since i was a little tiny girl and just fascinated me always a little compartments interesting thing about the money it's a wooden box is given to her by another fellow who really had a crush on a wednesday after after candace has died and since she's you know she's out there knocking on the door an end sometime a lot about and your father comes along and in that parade and say vote for him both but this memory box is given there by a little more free and he just stuff that was as you say things that fascinated you will put government bought a picture after picture after picture up

and i'm all that and the things that he gave her the jewelry that the little things he said you know they were all expensive things he sent wildflowers unease sent photographs of of sheep that he took kasabian out in aspen or and italy are or wherever he was such an interesting man a center aisle of leaves because there were no olive trees in north carolina and he wanted to see how that the dark green surface in the silvery underside were so magical when that when the wind blew when the wind sunlight hit at how with sparkle and things like that that he would talk about in his letters he was being a poet's soul went in his letters reflect that and eight and they were they came every week bar none and they told her what he was doing as much as they could and then they went on to tell are you know what is what was going on around him what the country look like where he was what they did

just on the varied dina basic details of his day but because he told her those things come up places she had never gotten to go she told them to as she was a great storyteller and love to come go on and on about the things he had told her you know where he had banned in and things like that so we would look through the jury listened to her stories and when you talk about leveraged that you wrote you say that at the outset there was a lot for more lows was sort of formal as if they were making certain that every word says exactly one inch of science and data and thousands of that study the right thing but that soon became comfortable and the letters became a conversation and i can you tell us in the book that as you read the letters you could see one that time that that that changed at

the moment when you say there is on his part so the sense of oppression and around that time and and i guess it's at that time when he is he's an alien british as it's fallen been assaulted and oxford before you do them now he's thinking about what's happening in britain and how easy it is for him in this country again and they're at their part for a while but he's the letters are reflective of sadness because people in his own country are dying and he's got a little help and it's tough lady and get in talk about good mood changes and how it was how he how easy was that for you to discern in reading the va a very easy because he and his first letters were very light and if people don't realize they are dead they wrote letters to each other even in the same town because she didn't have a telephone and it was just easier sometimes so they would

be like you know the one of the movies on friday de this that another then come once england was in the war in september of thirty nine tom it began to slowly change and a letter or two and then it was a dramatic thing he was embarrassed to be here he was a he was an honorable person and you just didn't not do something i am you know if it was almost as though he felt you were avoiding the issue by staying here but in reality he couldn't get back come they didn't need a passenger service pretty much didn't exist she had to go to spain and apply for permission to go in the then even reporters even journalist to do that he also have this news a sense of duty about his mother telling it was a lone father in his father died right you see him they are two grown children or not they're an ed also was torn about leaving our egos to do gets his

phd while he's won he's still wearing an enduring their enduring their romance he proposals your boiler i'm so glad that he did it it's one of those things i look at and just think if you didn't know it at the time but he did that for posterity because he had just been home he's technically should have done it than if he was going to do it he knew he was going to ship out but he chose for whatever reason an and i think part of it is like i said it was easier on paper to say some things that it's he was a shy man and it was a little hard maybe to that to say it in person that i don't really understand why he did it but i'm so grateful because it was such a beautiful proposal this i knew you recite some of it is really it is it so his element written wasn't it was an elegance and words

with the sun tzu total commitment and emotional physical level where but she doesn't respond in time and so he does it a second time and again which makes the story that ed people also don't realize this day of emails how hard it was to keep up with your loved one overseas or arm back and forth he would get one letter seven days after it was nailed and another six and a half weeks after it was mailed and he used to just collect them all because they tended to come in batches by the time they got around to delivering them an arrangement order and then trying to read them because it was it was just you couldn't depend on it you know it that you had no idea and a good instance of that was when he died and mom wrote her and her friend flow road or on the same day and for whatever reason mom's letter

traversed another path didn't make the shipper or whatever was in and came so much later you know that was a cruel thing that it is it was a really hard way to find i know i am not to find out i'll let you know when you think about him finally his answer is in his prayers answered he's in ghost asked on those this with this this mountain unit and one of the right things about the book of the photo albums and having them on that rope ladder and then training in aspen videos to two or three years office attendance becomes a second lieutenant is a wonderful picture of him standing there in uniform and you say that's a transformation there to see him in in that uniform that officer's uniform standing erect almost

and attention always voting for and to think of what his life had been and how he was as a person before that now i get some consolation from my god and very laid back to one who is very straight they were very artsy family another artist on the very liberal minded very forward thinking not the typical military second lieutenant to know it all an end yet there again so in the end he did it a fine job of it you know he took a he took all his good qualities and brought them to his job in an eye here still to this day how much men appreciate that you usually have a poor soul for a movie that he did carla shows up in in somehow some sometimes the portraits of flows into his letters live bird browning's wonderful time which you saw it

the closing line of his almost of them is almost prophetic monticello the number of counting the ways the field looking at the sand and so i i i thought about us that those are reasonable here is a fellow who i was totally out of character in this uniform and yet he was exactly where one of being in a woody had to be a not just a soldier were courageous soldier willing to give his life in the funding lewis's life in english in this country so he goes off to war shes a nurse along with interesting to me that she went to wharton i know it was the zenith of her life she she to the day she died she look back on that as i am

the best thing she ever did i think and as she did it says she wanted to go the minute pearl harbor was bombed i mean that was she was she would have loved to have gone than and couldn't like i said because of the car wreck that she wouldn't miss that opportunity for anything in and it never occurred to me growing up listening to all her war stories of all that how much courage it took to get on that ship and sail across the atlantic with submarines aiming for you know i never thought of my mother's being brave but she was his very brave to do something like that and numb and she sighed it again like and she saw it as her duty it was not an optional arm thing for you know for her to think about doing and maybe you know do it for a little while she wanted out of the military hospital stateside and she she would have been happier in a field hospital but that didn't happen and you can't always control it she ended up in general for those of you just began talking with students about her book critic kenneth which is the story of her

mother's love affair with a man named and he dies he dies from friendly fire what a tragedy and you know we see in today's warfare and most recently and i had a fellow who gave up a career in in professional football needed to go to war and killed by friendly fire and i had no idea new throughout the book and a lot of like no idea that it was a friendly fire did that affect her deeply the fact that there she never knew what she knew because of the dream she had well three days after kenneth died she was taking a match was working the night shift and she got to that point we've all been to when you start to wake up and you're not really a sleepin you're not really awake and she said and i found the letters she wrote to him and

said i saw you lying beside me you had your head on my arm and you are smoking a pipe it was the smell of his pipe that had awakened her and in this dream or whatever it was he told her you mustn't hate the man who did this you know we had a lot in common we could have been friends come you're going to have to be strong and carry on in an essential things like that and she knew afterwards that he was dead she had no proof but she knew deep in her heart that he was an edited not been a combat death but everybody in their first special service force told her wise and that was you know she was she was very torn i think her heart lay with bleeding this dream that you know she was that an educated logical woman you don't lose zynga someone's commanding officer say he died like this and say well you must be wrong because i had a dream and it was different so she tried very

hard to accept what she was told how he died and then man who wrote her and told her what it happened it did his best to tell her the truth without burdening her with just that sheer need listeners and then it must listen to release when she finally at something close to the truth or well i think i think it probably was for her but she never believed that story that i don't think she ever did because it is she was a great storyteller like i said and you know she would bad and then take away and then you know every story changed every time still did not and in big ways but you know with the details that story never changed she i'm told it almost in a row the manner she quoted what that ed miller had told her it and she always began it with well they said that

he was and then she would tell their version of it but i don't think she ever she never achieved a degree of comfort um well they're exceptions you know maybe she didn't but she she couldn't believe anybody would lie either she was i mean and you know she was of that generation and the type of person who told the truth all the time and it would have never occurred to her that anybody was less than honest let's talk again about this poet can do you know wondering about scotland will a name but there isn't there is a un and there is the poem he writes to shakespeare on a u where'd you run across all the mail that came the mail to both calm my mother had it and then when i went to do you were doing the research i went up to do you can they have everything archive including all of the letters that can run to mom during his military career sos nice i got two versions because cans letters to mother tend the

center on let's name our children nancy no way we should honeymoon in and it was all concerned with their upcoming marriage here let's maybe the world be over senate look like it's gonna be over saying you know his letters to mom were much more introspective yet things like is that where a ride in their bout is going on patrol he would have never told my mother he got shot at he could tell his mother that so i got to two perspectives two perspectives there and i found the local i'm in there is well it was only thing ever duplicated but that was that was it and it's such a beautiful poem and it i wonder it's kind of more something he would send to mom than mother actually because he didn't discuss it death with my mother he didn't discuss the possibility of anything happening to hammer or anything like that he and he kept her conversations fairly light because she was worried enough as it was about him you know how does one

really have to ruin his reflections on areas are low inflation rises and i'm into writing their home so long as men can breeze and eyes can see so long lives this and this gives life to the geopolitical and other days wrote those immortal words protective suits over nativity closes dead poet teach me how to sing such happy songs that fear show which brain the right as a government that they will sing was better than one time and they're so into parker beauty and a loving heart rending you know gorgeous words the first things you said first words out your mouth you have the soul of a poor and you don't really understand that they can to get right to the end you don't understand that thought and eight unity initial of lonely nights i think why i love was really undone in talking

about your father how could you take you know you say when she would go back to north carolina and visit her family and then you all would go over two months of those killers if you live in the room or his room and then your father knew about this where she was what you do you about that commitment because it was his second marriage to talk about how the hamlet well as i think i should have probably address that a little better in the book because i get a lot of questions about it when we were little annoyed about can he wasn't home you know so my mother never taught that can in front of him and no no she would've never because it would've been very hurtful to them but i'm you know my father new mom and angus mother was living with them when she married him in a small investments i've become a mother was still living there when they married and all

that and basically i think daddy's view while you're still living with mom arcos well when she married me and so i got back to dick burr down after the war and was nursing india began and moved back into cancel room there and i i think than i think basically he didn't have a choice it's what it would come down to a really totally honest but also you know you can't they eat can't fight with the dead man can can was gone and i'm a hike i think the key as in a paragraph early in the book that says he went into that marriage knowing he was her second show is that she never made it feel that what it exactly right and that sense does come from top ferraris to be done for you and know exactly how welcome to pitch it's everybody's first question i have the answer get very very well yes in the end and you know even though it's not oral conversation between them it's

not to be there in about a month and it you know and you had a very unhappy marriage now he he really married poorly the first time as i i said apparently she was just the most gorgeous creature you never say never forgets that he thought was about someone marble and and that he knew that he was the luckiest man in the world i mean he he went to his grave knowing man and he was my mother was you know we all think her mother's a seder or so many of us do anyway but my mother was truly one of the kindest people who ever lived and he was grateful i think to be with someone who was so kind after an experience cause you've got her when it got or when a half dozen other fathers who were trying to get him failed csi i mean they were knocking on the door well when the idea my uncle said that the

line at my grandmother's house was just it was just constant and they would just bag my grandmother to intercede for them you know why i love her so much i wanna marry her and a lot of these were her patients surveyed they truly revered heard it in a way you know they had been in a military hospital but been in war they had had these horrible experience and here comes this smiling happy person who is just so gentle and kind and you know they wanted her more than anything and i think that think that was another thing that helped daddy was that he won you know in that instant see what really got her smugglers into the gift not just to your children in another town but your momma oh absolutely ah and i know that she would be thrilled with it i really do because she had always meant to ride it didn't do it you know time ran out bomb it that it she would be self thrilled to get to know that her story live on not for

her sake but really for can see now even her granddaughter of when his living in france right now has gone to visit ken's grave and you know that's and that's a tribute to both of them that you still to let you know that as long as somebody loved she's still left here i have that photograph of aggression either you've done it once i already i've done i'm one i talk about in there about the force that that'll be candidate and house book that i finished a collection of essays i've not added to them they're in bad need of some major editing but they're completed in and once i put kenneth to bed i'll work on that and i've just started an awful i mean at you know a novel as i trip over the words because i don't read many and i didn't think i would ever write nonfiction to writing is in fact it's infectious i congratulate you think you would run out of blanks for coming thank you for

having me as wonderful it's all of you for watching and johnson bowed forward on words fb