Greetings Everyone!
It's time to start planning for your attendance at the November 19th meeting of the CWFMNY! This will be our first annual Commemorative meeting for recently departed CWFMNY fellow founding member Nathan Burkan Jr. ... yes, Jr, even though he passed from us this past February at the age of 92! Included here is the same photo of our 2011 inaugural Battlefield Tour to the Shenandoah Valley that I included in last month's meeting announcement, right after the death of fellow founding member, and CWFMNY President, Howard Rosenthal. It's only fitting to once again highlight two of our beloved founding members in the setting that they so thoroughly enjoyed! Nathan is standing in the center of the 2nd row, dressed all in dark blue, standing between Howard and another founding member, Jackie Eberstein, who now lives with husband Conrad in Richmond Virginia. Nathan's wife Roberta is standing in the back row, second from the right side of the picture. I hope it will be a long time before I find it fitting to post this photo again!.
Roberta Burkan, Nathan's wife of 55 years, will attend the meeting, and she has very graciously allowed the CWFMNY to use whatever funds are necessary from the Commemoration fund that has been set up for Nathan for the redesign and updating of our new webpage. Recognizing Nathan's love for reading everything about History that he could find, Roberta felt he would be honored to have his name attached to our effort to move forward in web presence, with the great hope of being able to attract new membership.
Our speaker for this meeting will be Maine-born historian and author Alan Shaw Taylor, who has taught at the University of California (Davis), Boston University, and most recently the University of Virginia. He is a member of a very select group of authors who have been awarded two Pulitzer prizes, and has most recently published "American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873", in May of this year. Note that this is a Continental history, covering the Civil Wars of the combined "Americas", meaning the US, Mexico and Canada. It covers a twenty year period in which North America's three major countries all transformed themselves into new nations, during a period of great turbulence combined with foreign interference. It will be fascinating to see how Alan weaves together these events with the foreign invasions and meddling that complicated the flow of history during this period. So it is a guarantee that we will be listening to chapters of North American history that represent "new territory" for many of us.
The November meeting will be held on Tuesday, November 19th, at Villa Mosconi, located at 69 MacDougal Street, NY NY. The meeting begins at 6:00PM sharp, with a pay bar available if you arrive before that. PLEASE contact Ann Plogsterth at either 212-877-6814 or at plogsterth@aol.com, if you plan to attend or have any further questions. I will be on the road for the next three days on our annual drive back down to Florida, but I'll also be available for questions after that.
Jim Santagata
Mobile: 718-930-0611