Date: Sunday, October 29, 2017
Time: 2:00PM
Where: The Garst Museum, Greenville, Ohio
Garst Museum Hosts Free Lecture Featuring Mitchell Stephens, Author of New Lowell Thomas Biography
On Sunday, October 29 at 2:00 pm, author Mitchell Stephens will kick off the Fall and Winter Speaker Series at Garst Museum. Stephens will discuss his new biography The Voice of America: Lowell Thomas and the Invention of 20th Century Journalism and will preview an upcoming documentary of Thomas’s life. While many citizens in Darke County are more aware of Lowell Thomas than most, few Americans recognize his name, let alone the influence he had on twentieth-century journalism.
Stephens is a professor of journalism and mass communications at the Carter Institute at New York University. He is also a specialist on the history of journalism and researched new directions for journalism at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School. The Voice of America is his sixth book.
Stephens’s new book is the first and definitive biography of the most famous journalist of his time and delves into why Thomas is credited with inventing modern journalism. During the era before television, Stephens believes that Lowell Thomas “reached a larger proportion of Americans than any journalist has before or since.” Thomas reached most of his listeners through his radio broadcasts or through the newsreels shown in theaters. Thomas believed journalists should be trustworthy and should not take sides. He influenced both Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw.
After Thomas’s death in 1981, Cronkite stated “He was the man-about-the world that every adventurous boy wants to be when he grows up. He crammed a couple of centuries worth of living into those four-score years and nine.” Brokaw is quoted as saying, “Lowell Thomas…was a fixture in our household on the radio at night. And I think even then I had the inkling that I wanted to have an adventurous life, and he was the model for that.”
Thomas was a great adventurer, venturing into parts of the world that were remote or were considered “forbidden.” He was 23 when he first visited Alaska and the Yukon and he flew to Antarctica when he was 70. Lawrence of Arabia became a legend through Thomas’s broadcasts and his writings. Perhaps most memorable to many Americans of a certain generation is the voice of Lowell Thomas. His voice can be heard and more can be learned about his life in the Lowell Thomas…with Lawrence and Beyond exhibit at Garst Museum.
All lectures are free and open to the public. However, regular admission will apply to tour the exhibit and museum which includes the outstanding National Annie Oakley Center, Crossroads of Destiny, Lowell Thomas, and Longtown exhibits. Funding for this program was made possible by the Harry D. Stephens Memorial, Inc. Foundation.
The Garst Museum is located at:
205 N. Broadway, Greenville, OH 45331
937-548-5250
website: www.garstmuseum.org
email: [log in to unmask]
_______________
Clay Johnson, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Garst Museum, The National Annie Oakley Center, Darke County Research
Center, and the Darke County Historical Society
205 North Broadway
Greenville, OH 45331
Phone: 937-548-5250 / Fax: 937-548-7645
http://www.garstmuseum.org
http://gatheringatgarst.com
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