October 5, 2023 6:00 Pm – 7:30 Pm CT
Crown Point Community Library
122 N. Main Street
Crown Point, IN 46307
Ray Boomhower will speak at Crown Point Community LIbrary (and virtually) on Thursday, October 5
To the millions of Americans on the homefront during World War II, Ernie Pyle’s columns in newspapers across the country offered a foxhole view of the struggle as he reported on the life and death of the average soldier. When he died on April 18, 1945, while covering the fighting in the Pacific, Pyle’s popularity and readership was worldwide, with his column appearing in 400 daily and 300 weekly newspapers.
In his program, award-winning author and historian Ray E. Boomhower, author of The Soldier’s Friend: A Life of Ernie Pyle, will explore the reporter’s legendary career, including his days growing up in the small town of Dana, Indiana; his life as a student at Indiana University in Bloomington; his work as a roving correspondent with the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain; his growing fame as a columnist detailing the rigors of combat faced by the average G.I. in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France during World War II; and his tragic death on the small island of Ie Shima off the coast of Okinawa in the Pacific.
Boomhower is senior editor at the Indiana Historical Society Press, where, since 1999, he has served as editor of the IHS’s quarterly popular history magazine Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History. In addition to his biography of Pyle, he has written books about such notable Hoosiers as Civil War general and best-selling novelist Lew Wallace, astronaut Gus Grissom, World War II photographer John Bushemi, suffragette and peace activist May Wright Sewall, and journalist and speechwriter John Bartlow Martin.
Parking is available to in the lots to the north and south of the Library, as well as on Main Street or East Street.