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By Tom Henry, Blade staff reporter
The Blade (Toledo, OH)
04-12-96
Allan Eckert doesn't strike you as the kind of guy who got bored in history class.
An author of 30 books, hundreds of magazine articles, and many more than 200 scripts for the Wild Kingdom television series, he has won an Emmy Award, the Newberry Honor, and been nominated for six Pulitzer Prizes.
His outdoor drama, Tecumseh!, has been seen by more than a million people in the last 20 years.
He has earned a national reputation for historical writing with his six-volume Narratives of America, A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh and, most recently, That Dark and Bloody River, an 810-page chronicle of the Ohio River Valley's early settlement.
All that aside, Mr. Eckert confessed yesterday that he found history class to be "deadly dull" while growing up near Chicago.
The books he read were uninspiring. So were the teachers who taught the classes.
Mr. Eckert, keynote speaker at the 1996 Conference on Local History, said he cam to realize it doesn't have to be that way.
The event was co-sponsored by the Center for Archival Collections at Bowling Green State University and the Hilda Bentley Preservation Endowment Fund.
It was moved this year to the Holiday Inn French Quarter in Perrysburg Township, partly because the total of 375 registrants is twice the average of previous years, said Paul Yon, archival center director.
Mr. Eckert said some mainstream historians -- mainly academic types -- have questioned whether he takes too many liberties with his writing. He said he reconstructs more dialogue than they like but can document what he has done.
"It took a long time for academic historians to accept that I wasn't changing history to make it palatable," Mr. Eckert said.
Other speakers were G. Michael Pratt, who has researched the Battle of Fallen Timbers since the early 1980s, and Larry Nelson, site manager at Fort Meigs State Memorial.
Dr. Pratt, professor and director of the archaeology laboratory at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, was involved in last summer's dig at the battlesite. Half-inch-wide artifacts, such as buttons, coins, and musket pellets, supplement written materials such as diaries and maps, he said.
"We're close to understanding what really happened," he said of the 1794 battle in which troops led by General "Mad" Anthony Wayne defeated Native Americans.
The college has a home page to help Internet users learn more about the battle: http://www2.heidelberg.edu/FallenTimbers/.
NOTICE: This article, which may be copyrighted, is reprinted with specific permission granted to Heidelberg College. Further reprint rights must be secured from the publisher.
Heidelberg College / Office of College Relations
/ webmaster@heidelberg.edu