Author Rob Simbeck gives the 2013 Johnson Lecture
On March 20, 2013, Rob Simbeck, an award-winning author who has written for numerous periodicals, including The Washington Post and Rolling Stone, delivered the Center’s 2013 Johnson Lecture. In his talk, titled “Tennessee’s Cornelia Fort, Pearl Harbor, and the Female Pilots of World War II,” he recounted the story of Tennessee’s own Cornelia Fort, the history-making Nashville pilot who served during World War II as a founding member of the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, the first organization under the United States Army Air Forces to employ female pilots. You can watch below video footage of Mr. Simbeck’s talk.
This year’s lecture marked the 14th year of the lecture series that was established in honor of the late Dr. Charles W. Johnson, the founder of the UTK World War II Project, the forerunner of today’s Center for the Study of War & Society, which he directed until his retirement in 1998.