Showing results by author "Charles Culbertson" in All Categories

At 6 feet 7 inches, Jack “Shorty” Manch was the tallest of Jimmy Doolittle’s fliers and also one of the most colorful. This biography details his life as a rambunctious kid growing up in Staunton, Virginia, his pranks in military academies and his incredible adventure as a member of the group who launched the first bombing raid on Tokyo. Manch died a hero, also, and his sacrifice over the skies of Las Vegas is explored in print here for the first time.

"Once A Marine" is the true story of the life of a private in the U.S. Marines on the battlefields of Northern France during the First World War. The author, Levi E. Hemrick, did not set down his narrative until nearly 50 years after the somber, bloody, exhausting and at times hilarious event he describes. Blessed with the vivid, selective memory of an artist and a half century of gestation, Hemrick penned a memoir that was a skillfully blended admixture of prosaic fact and deeply pondered comment. The day-by-day incidents of almost forgotten battles are recalled with a purity refined by ...

When the afternoon train struck and killed a shambling old mental patient in Staunton, Virginia, on February 19, 1930, no one suspected that the frail and battered corpse had once been a hellbent-for-leather Confederate cavalryman. But he had been. William Meade McMechen had abandoned his pro-Union family and stormed out of western Virginia in 1861 to fight for the South in some of the Civil War’s most pitched battles, and when the war was lost, went West to carve out a career in the mining industry. The life and descent into mental illness of this forgotten Confederate cavalryman is ...

When the Japanese military steamrolled through the Far East in 1941 – a campaign that included the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7 – U.S. Admiral Thomas C. Hart was in command of what was known at that time as the Asiatic Fleet. Suddenly finding himself and the forces under his control facing a merciless, nearly unstoppable enemy, Hart fought back with everything that was at his disposal – which wasn't much. Hart's classic order to the Asiatic Fleet just before the battle of Makassar Strait was, "Submarines and surface ships will attack the enemy, and no vessel will leave the ...

"A Bargain With God: The Tony Fontane Story," is the true story of pop singer Tony Fontane who, in the 1940s and 1950s, recorded for Mercury and Columbia Records and snagged several respectable hits, including one – “Cold, Cold Heart” – that earned him a Gold Record. But Fontane, who had escaped a bleak existence in North Dakota with nothing but determination and his soaring, lyric tenor voice, was an unhappy man who lived on a blistering hatred for (and denial of) the God of his missionary parents. In 1957 he was blindsided at a Los Angeles intersection and lay in a coma for 30 ...

"If this Valley is lost, Virginia is lost." These words of the immortal "Stonewall" Jackson rang truer and truer as the Civil War raged in the great Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. With every Federal push to conquer the "Breadbasket of the Confederacy," ragtag, hard-pressed Southern soldiers fought tooth and nail to repel them. The story of the War Between the States in the Shenandoah Valley is one of drama, struggle, sacrifice and suffering. As the South's most strategic corridor (Confederate armies marching down the Valley could threaten Washington and Baltimore) it became a focal point ...

The Ultimate Big Book of Staunton, Virginia Historic Tales This anthology of previously unpublished stories from historic Staunton, Virginia contains a whopping 87 chapters, 50 images and 70,000 words – all calculated to delight and inform the Virginia history afficionado. Staunton historian Charles Culbertson has assembled a vast array of tales from Staunton's past and has arranged them in chronological order from the Revolutionary War period to the mid 1960s. Forgotten Virginia History Brought to Life Did you know about the theater started in Staunton by British captives during the ...

This second volume in the Staunton, Virginia Bathroom Series continues with another smorgasbord of little known historical stories from the Queen City of the Shenandoah Valley. From the Revolutionary War and the Civil War to the Great Depression and beyond, these quick and easy-to-digest morsels of history from Staunton are perfect for the historian, the researcher or the person simply taking a quick and pleasing break from the pressures of life. Written and compiled by Staunton's premier historian, Charles Culbertson.

Originally published in 2004 and now nearly impossible to find in print, "Staunton, Virginia: A Treasury of Historic Tales" is a gold mine of information about one of the most beautiful, historic and fascinating cities in the United States. Written by Staunton historian Charles Culbertson, "Treasury" contains 35 chapters that tell little-known stories of the movers, shakers, saints and scalawags who have made Staunton the Queen City of the Shenandoah. Chapters topics include the 1911 fire that all but destroyed Staunton's Wharf district; how schoolmistress Mary Julia Baldwin outfoxed Yankee...

"Staunton, Virginia: Another Treasury of Historic Tales," by Charles Culbertson, is a companion volume to his immensely popular (and now hard to find) "Staunton, Virginia: A Treasury of Historic Tales." Like the first volume, this fascinating book contains 35 chapters dealing with lesser-known stories from Staunton, Virginia's history. Chapter topics include the 1904 escape of a murderer who was scheduled to be hanged in a matter of days; the 1896 flood that destroyed much of the city’s Wharf section; the city manager who was killed during a softball game; Jack Manch, a Staunton man who ...