“Good evening, everybody!” This was the salutation Lowell Thomas (1892–1981) gave every weeknight for more than 45 years. Thomas was the voice tens of millions of people listened to on the radio to find out what was happening in the world. Lowell, however, didn’t live his life behind the microphone. He lived more broadly than…

Let me begin by making my prejudice perfectly clear. In the late summer of 1963, shortly before I entered Staunton Military Academy (SMA) as a 7th grader 200 miles from my home, my mother took me from Boonville, North Carolina, into Winston-Salem to watch the recently released movie “Lawrence of Arabia.” My five younger siblings…

As a lifelong fan of cinema, it was hard to admit that I couldn’t remember much of director David Lean’s 1962 masterwork “Lawrence of Arabia.” It is one of those films that I’d seen bits and pieces of with family members many years ago but, due to circumstances, wasn’t able to enjoy many of the…