Celebrated life in our clinic. In fact, our kernel used to refer to the physical there be clinic as a happy place. So, i decided i would write my own article and i wrote what i felt was a seemingly innocuous article. I wrote about taking the group of our patients swimming for the first time. I didnt consider this article to be particularly fantastic and it wasnt super funny, so i wasnt really prepared for the reaction that i got when people called me and people emailed me and i realized that the ashleys had been correct out of that this had been a story that people wanted to know about and also that i was the right person to write it because i would be able to write about walter reed in a humane and humorous manner with the insight that an outside reporter might not have. So, walter reed shut down and i was part of the group that transferred to the new walter reed at bethesda Naval Hospital and a wrote the book. Before i turn the manuscript into my publisher and rented out my chain of command and had my coworkers read it, my supervisors and then i had to give it to the chief of the rehab and this is a guy that his management style he is not year, so i can safely tell you this, i would describe as being completely unpredictable. I was really worried about giving him my manuscript. I thought whatever was going to happen was probably not going to be good. Anyway, so i thought what i would do is wait until friday and then i would give it to him and that way he would have the weekend to kind of cool down. So, friday rolls around and he comes into the clinic in all my coworkers knew what was going to happen and they were all anticipating this and he walks in and he has a big cast on his leg. One of my coworkers pointed that out to me in college she was like hey look adell, at least he cant chase you around, so i gave him my manuscript and i waited for him to completely go after me and instead, he got really sentimental. He told me that we had this new hospital and these nice facilities and that most of the staff had stayed on, but he owes felt like there was something missing and he could never put his finger on what it was and then he realized. He said it was the spirit, it was the ghost that you could actually feel when you were at the old walter reed and i really felt like he said at the best. Walter reed was americas oldest military hospital. It was open for 102 years. It treated soldiers from every single war we fought in from world war i forward. Is sought over 500,000 patients. Of coarse, there was a spirit there. A spirit you could feel every day, so if you read the book, i hope you think about that spirits and i appreciate your time. Thank you. [applause]. If we could just open up the floor for maybe just one question. Does anyone have any questions for ms. Levine . Yes, sir. I think i watch the Lincoln Movie and that was about walter reed and everything like that, so but, all of the history that went through that place was really astounding for everyone who was there with it, so how did you feel being a part of that entire history . Were you able to follow the history or was it you are just concentrating on your work . Thats a great question. I love the history there. They had the original hospital. We worked in the newer hospital, but you had to go to the original hospital to get a lot of the administrative stuff done and they had these stairs, the stone steps but actually sagged in the middle because sony people had walked up them and i just always every time i walked up it blew me away and i could not believe that this was really going to happen that we were really going to shut down. I mean, we hoped to the last second that that would not be the case because so much history had happened there and to think that we were going to be its final chapter was extremely sobering. So, i was very grateful to have the been there and i really hat m sad that they are going to develop it, but hopefully they develop it in a nice way that we can all enjoy. It used to be a civil war camp for well. I mean, it has been there throughout american history. Anyway, thank you. Thank you all for attending this session and i hope you are enjoying your time here at the louisiana book festival and we will have your book signing from 10 45 a. M. To 11 30 a. M. At the barnes noble pet where she will have her book, run, dont walk inside Walter Reed Army medical center. Thank you. ,. [applause]. Sema car coverage of the 12th annual louise in a book festival continues with a look at the life of George Washington carver , a man born into slavery and embedded many items that are still used today. Met good morning. Thank you for coming out on this gloomy halloween day. It is my privilege to introduce the distinguished historian writer christina vells, she has taught history for many years and is a professor in the history department. Shield lectures widely on historical and biographical topics. Her first book, intimate enemies, which was published by lsu press where i work, it was chosen as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times book review, which praise doctor velez spectacular job. Intimate enemies also received a coveted stark review from publishers weekly, which called it a spellbinding gothic narrative of 19th century france in new orleans. Her later writings have included the wellreceived hitler kiss and indecent secret. Lsu is externally proud to be the publisher of her most recent book, which came out in september entitles George Washington carver. This deeply researched investigation into the life and rare one of the most remarkable men of the last century, the brilliant African American scientists washington carver is the first biography to fully examine both carvers personal life and scientific achievement. Its written in an engaging style and his volume that has only been out a month has already received wonderful notice in the press, a stark review from the fine journal book list, which says this is an extranet look at the life of a brilliant man and garnered a favorable notice from publishers weekly. A review they conclude, it is carvers genuine warmth that shines in this story as it navigates white and black society while producing scientific achievements that benefited all. Lsu press is externally proud to be the publisher of this book and im honored to introduce its author to speak to you today, please join me in welcoming doctor christina vells. [applause]. Thank you, darlene. I dont know if i can live up to all of that. Thank you for braving the rain. It occurs to me that if you are not an american and if you are not too young coming i mean if youre not old you may not know exactly who George Washington carver is. And that is kind of amazing because in 1950, if you had asked any thirdgrader whose George Washington carver, that kid would have known and told you everything about him and told you all the things George Washington carver did and if you ask him who is president of the United States he might or might not have known. Thats how famous carver was. And it was a deserved fame. What did he do exactly . Well, he came to the south and discovered that there was abject poverty among the sharecroppers of the south because they had been producing cotton on the same lan over and over again and cotton leeches the soil, so the same lan was producing less and less cotton. The south was just in a miserable condition and the sharecroppers were starving. And he saw that what they needed to do was to find some cash crop that would enrich the soil and at the same time that they could sell, so he did a lot of experiments and finally he came up with something that was wonderful for the soil, it was in a couple seasons it would make it productive and that something was peanuts. Peanuts as we patinas were really really good for southern soil, but peanuts in those day was no more a cash crop and parsley. If you told people you have to plant peanuts, what am i going to do it peanuts . I cant sell peanuts, so he set about trying to invent things, trying to make products that would make peanuts something that you could sell as a cash crop. In the course of his researches he came up with over 2000, 2000 products made a peanuts and that wasnt all. He took all kinds of things that were useless, things that no one wanted, things were going to waste, like animal bones in farmer shards, barnyard feathers , red clay in the hills of alabama. Alabama was where he was located. Swamp sludge, weeds, all source of things, dust. Dust, can you imagine . All sorts of things here he came up with commercial products. By the time of his death, peanuts was the third biggest cash crop in alabama and georgia. He had actually succeeded in pulling these pitiful sharecroppers out of restitution and made a lot of them, at least, good farmers. Of course, there were thousands, i mean, really thousands of little childrens books explaining this wonderful man who was a negro and yet had managed to become one of the foremost scientists of his age at a time when racism was more virulent than you or i can imagine. You had to live through it to understand how vicious and pervasive racism was at that time. Wasnt like a negro coming to the floor today. It was a completely remarkable, astonishing phenomenon. So, that was who he was and thats what he was so famous. Will come all right, now you dont need to be read the book, right . He didnt start out famous. He had a life that was as cursed with a drama as yours or mine or anyones. How did he start out . Well, to begin with he was a slave in missouri, as a child. He was born on a slave farm to a very kindly white people and when he was an infant, he was kidnapped. He was taken to arkansas. Its during the civil war when all of the authority has broken down. There is no police, no army in the area to keep order and to so gangs just come through and they say we are confederates they were confederates, they were just hoodlums. Or we are unionists and of course they are basically gangs of neighborhoods, teenagers and they kidnapped him and they brought him to arkansas, with his mother. Well, his mother got separated from him and she was never ever found, but his owner sent someone after him, treated him for a resource and brought him back. He raised him. This kindly white man taught george carver, Carver George as he was known them then. To play the fiddle, because he couldnt teach him to read because he couldnt read himself. He was totally illiterate. When little carvers 10 years old, he desperately wants to go to school. The white school in the town where he lived in missouri, would have him. So, with the carvers permission , he went 10 miles to a new Freedmens Bureau school that was opening in missouri, and he went to school their. How does a 10year old survived by himself . Well, he goes to work for a family and he works for them during the day and works for three or four weeks, three or four months until he saved enough money that he can go to school and by school close. He goes to school for three or four months until he runs out of money and that he goes back to work again. Thats the way carvers arrived. From the age of 10 until he finally finished high school when he was in his mid 20s. He was a drifter. He went to all of the up start towns in kansas, and all around to try to find schools where he could work and try to find work. There was always work because there were always settlers. This was the settling of the west. When he graduates from high school in his mid 20s, he got together all of his letters of recommendation, everything you do when you want to apply to college. He wanted so badly to have a college education. Of course, a number of colleges turned him down without any excuse, but one that had advertised that it was a very open and situation, we are open to everyone, we are open to all sorts of people. Well, he gathered all the information and he applied to this college and when he got there he walked, by the way, 25 miles to get there and when he gets to the college they take one look at him and his smiling blackface and they say, we meant we were open for indians, not negros. So, he was turned away. He didnt have enough money to get back to where he came from, so he stayed in the town. He borrowed a washboard in a tub and started taking in laundry, which was his default way of supporting himself. Laundry is very cheap to do. All you really need is soap and in washington avenue could watch peoples close. So, he washed and ironed close and supported himself and at one point he even went out and tried his luck at homesteading. This was the time of the government that was giving people land if they would build a shack on it or build a house on it or build a sod house and farm its. So, he gets his stake in a little land. That doesnt sound when i learned about this when i was in college, it didnt sound too interesting. Okay, homesteading in the west, yeah, yeah. Well, when you get these documents and you read exactly what they read required of the people that were getting this land, the sod house had to be just so much and most of these sod houses were about the size im walking right now. The size of a big bathroom. You had to build a sod house in such a such a way and plant some entries. Then you see the inventory of what people had in these houses. The actual documents that they wrote enumerating their chairs and therell wash tubs and their beds and the plants that they had in the windows of their little sod houses very by the way, if you want to build a sod house i know all about it. Theoretically, i could build a sod house for you. But, its so much fun to get your hands on these documents and see, this is the real history. This is whats really worth looking into history for. So, he tried building a sod house and it was all right for about three years and then he got lonely for Classical Music. Only for opera, books for discussions of great authors. Now, how did this little kid learn about great authors . Where did he hear Classical Music . He was hardly permitted to go in even a white church where he would be able to hear music. How did he learn these things and how did he develop a taste for these things . I dont know. Its almost enough to make you religious, to wonder how did someone like that conceive of such marvelous tastes. So, he goes back and he tries again and he manages to get into an art school. He was a wonderful painter when he was a kid on the farm. Of course, they didnt have paint, but he used to paint flowers and boil them and crush them and make paints out of them and then he would take tree stumps that were there and clean and he would paint things on the tree stumps and thats had he developed his artistic ability, so he gets to this art school and hes okay for about three years and hes about to graduate and his teacher tells him, look, you have no future at all as a negro artist. You are going to be a beggar. If it got to go into something where you can make a living. I want you to apply to Iowa State College to the Botany Department and get a degree in agriculture. He said, they wont take me. He said yeah, they will take you. My father is the head of the Botany Department, so he went to Iowa State College and he worked his way through. He lived in a toolshed that he found on the edge of the campus, a toolshed whose previous tenants were only rats that had no plumbing, the had no water and of course, no electricity. Had nothing. It was a bear toolshed. He moved into its and lived in it, all the time that he was in college. He worked as a janitor and took in laundry from the other students. In order to keep himself in college. Iowa state wasnt just any college. I was stay was the harvard of agricultural schools. Well, agricultural schools, listen, in those days its hard for us to realize that america couldnt feed itself and we were importing food. So, people were desperate for scientists who could make a selfsufficient in food and Agricultural Sciences what it is today, something that everyone at to get into and everyone wanted to know about. So, he goes into agricultural science and he goes to a school that produces three secretaries of agriculture, us secretaries of agriculture and a Vice President ial candidate. In other words, he goes into a school where all of these professors are going to come become bigwigs in government and he gets to know them all, especially doneil henry a wallace, doneil Henry C Wallace and james wilson. They love him. They think he is a genius. He begins to explore collecting plans, identifying plans, finding various uses for plants and does all sorts of things with his knowledge and may give him the room to do it. They publishes articles and they place him praise him and encourage and they let him do serious research. They think that he has hung the moon. So, they give him a position there and he gets a masters degree. They give him a fullfledged faculty position. Hes a professor. Well, everythings turning up roses for George Washington carver. He has a niche in a White Institution and is doing important research. He is praised, valued and everyone adores him. I tell you, if you had read the thousands of writers letters from this man, you can understand why people adored him. Hes funny. Hes kind. Hes sweet. Hes positive and never has a critical word to say about anyone or anything. He is humble and he is so mary. He has a joke and something funny and something humorous that practically everything. So, they love him to death, but do you know what happens . A man named booker t. Washington who happens to be the foremost black man of his time passes through iowa, and wants an interview with George Washington carver. He asks him to come to tessa skeet institute alabama, a secondary school, really. It causes up a college, but its really like a Vocational School in the hills of alabama. Carver falls under the spell of booker t. Washington. Now, booker t does not come off too well in my book. Actually, he was probably one of the most unpleasant, ruthless and contemptible people i have met in history. He did wonderful things for his race. I dont begrudge him his attitude towards white people because if you lived in that time, they were so other way. You had to do what he did. You had to sell yourself out. That part of it i can very well excuse. What i cant excuse is the abominable treatment that he delves out to everyone who was personally connected with him, his teachers, his wives, his cohorts, anyone. So, he has a very ve