On what would have been my mother’s 95th birthday, today I can’t help but think she played a pivotal role in me wanting to be a writer and write an investigative memoir about her husband’s still classified death in Vietnam. My love of words started at an early age when she surrounded my siblings and me with volumes of reading material. We grew up surrounded by books, encyclopedias, and countless magazines, including National Geographic, Life, Newsweek, Popular Science, and Popular Mechanics. After finding my father’s letters a quarter-century after his death and realizing from them he was making a lot of enemies in Vietnam, three days after her death she gave me my first real clue what may have happened to him when I found a note she had left for me to find among her insurance papers. Yes, the dead still speak to us. Thank you, Mom. Happy Birthday.
The Dead Still Speak to Us
- Post author By James b. Wells
- Post date September 9, 2022
- No Comments on The Dead Still Speak to Us
By James b. Wells
JAMES B. WELLS is a retired criminology and criminal justice professor in the School of Justice Studies in the College of Justice, Safety, and Military Science at Eastern Kentucky University, and is the recipient of the 2025 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences John Howard Award, an award given intermittently, upon significant demand, to recognize an individual who has made significant and sustained contributions to the practice of corrections. A former carpenter, soldier, and correctional officer in a super-maximum-security prison and later as a researcher/planner assisting architects in prison design, he has multiple degrees, including an M.S. in Criminal Justice, a Ph.D. in Research, and an MFA in Creative Writing. He’s authored or co-authored over sixty-five books, chapters, articles, and essays, as well as over a hundred and fifty research reports for various local, state, and federal agencies. Recent essays from his research and memoir work appear or are forthcoming in Collateral Journal, About Place Journal, Wild Roof Journal, Military Experience and the Arts, The Wrath-Bearing Tree, Shift, Proud to be: Writing by American Warriors, Trajectory Journal, and From Pen to Page III: More Writings from the Bluegrass Writers Coalition.
His investigative memoir about his father's still CIA-classified death in Vietnam in 1965, titled Because: A CIA Coverup and a Son’s Odyssey to Find the Father He Never Knew, will be launched on Father's Day weekend, 2025. Links to publications, presentations, trailers, social media, blog, and other information can be found at https://jamesbwells.com. James enjoys spending much of his leisure time with his spouse on their Lexington, Kentucky farm located on the palisades of the Kentucky River, where he is an organic gardener and beekeeper.
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