KU News Release

Hall Center to host screening of PBS documentary

LAWRENCE — Two University of Kansas professors will be part of a panel discussion on the PBS documentary series “America at a Crossroads.”

The series of 11 films explores the challenges confronting the post-9/11 world and will air 8 to 10 p.m. each night April 15-20 on PBS.

KU’s Hall Center for the Humanities and its partners, WETA television in Washington, D.C., and PBS, will host a preview of one of the documentaries, “Operation Homecoming: Writing the War Time Experience,” at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 14, at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. A discussion with KU professors, U.S. military personnel featured in the documentary and the director will follow the screening. The event is free and open to the public.

“Operation Homecoming” explores the firsthand accounts of American troops through their own words — fiction, verse, letters, essays and personal journals. Combining interviews and dramatic readings, the film transforms this collection of writing into a deep examination of life on the front lines.

Panelists are:

Roger Spiller, adjunct professor of history at KU, held the George C. Marshall Distinguished Professorship of Military History at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth from 1992 to 2005. Spiller has also been special assistant to the commander in chief, United States Readiness Command, MacDill Air Force Base and personal historian to the chief of staff of the U.S. Army. The author and editor of 10 books, including “An Instinct for War: Scenes from the Battlefields of History,” Spiller will hold the 2007-08 Charles Ewing Distinguished Visiting Professorship of Military History at the United States Military Academy.

Theodore A. Wilson is a professor and associate chair of KU’s Department of History. Wilson has written widely on the history of American foreign relations, the World War II Allied coalition and military history. The University Press of Kansas will publish his “Building Warriors: Selection and Training of U.S. Ground Combat Troops in World War II” in spring 2008. He has held visiting appointments at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the U.S. Army Center for Military History and is general editor of the University Press of Kansas series “Modern War Studies,” which has published about 190 original titles on military history and related subjects.

Richard E. Robbins is an award-winning producer and director who has been making documentaries for PBS, cable and network television for more than a decade. Since 1998, he has been a special projects producer for Peter Jennings and is currently based in Los Angeles, where he continues to develop and direct his own documentaries.

Edward “Parker” Gyokeres joined the Air Force in 1992. After stints around the globe he was assigned to Tallil Air Base in Nasiiriyah, Iraq, which became the inspiration for “Camp Muckamungus.” He is now a military journalist at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Ga.

Before serving a tour in Iraq as a PSYOP team sergeant for an activated Army Reserve detachment, Jack Lewis worked in news reporting, telecommunications infrastructure, general contracting and hardware sales. He has been honorably discharged, currently works in the service department at a BMW motorcycle dealership and is finishing a memoir of his experiences.

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