Bøger af Tony Cope

In 2015 almost fourteen million tourists visited Savannah, Georgia. The city is rated in the travel media as one of the top 10 tourist destinations in America and by many as one of the top 10 in the world. Millions come every year to be immersed in the history, the culture and the general ambiance of this beautiful city. Many U.S. presidents, soon to be presidents and ex-presidents have also visited Savannah. Some have come to vacation, others to campaign in elections, several to mark historical events, and still others to attend conferences. Several spent several days in the city and others just an hour or two. All, even one who had in the past been a hated enemy, have received a warm and gracious Savannah welcome. "Hail To The Chiefs, Y'all!; Presidential Visits to Savannah, Georgia" is a history of those visits beginning with that of the nation's first president, George Washington to the most recent presidential visitor, Barack Obama.

SAVANNAH has the largest designated Historic Landmark District in America and it is based on the original plan for the Colony of Georgia designed by James Edward Oglethorpe in 1733. Within the District today are residences, hotels, churches, businesses and a university. Thousands of tourists visit the city every year and most, residents and tourists alike, walk the streets in the Historic District without any idea of for whom the streets are named. Who were these historic figures, what did they do to have a street named for them? Oglethorpe and Martin Luther King are two names most would recognize, they may think that they know for whom Lincoln Street is named, but who were Drayton, Whitaker, Bryan and Abercorn? What did Harris, Hull, Gaston and Gordon do to warrant such an honor? Were any of the streets named for women? "IT'S NOT THAT LINCOLN" answers those questions.

The Chambers Concise Dictionary defines the word "serendipity" as "the faculty of making happy chance finds". In the Merriam Webster Dictionary it is "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought after". Coined by Horace Walpole in 1754, it is the term that characterizes the author's life and is the theme that runs throughout this book. Stealing Stones is about a journey; one which has taken many unexpected and for the most part happy turns. The author has probably been, metaphorically speaking, Stealing Stones throughout his whole adult life, finding himself in professions and activities for which he had no preparation or training and in which he had no expectations of ever being involved. The comedian and actor, W. C. Fields, once said, "Never work with children or animals". For eighteen years the author as first director of the Oatland Island Wildlife Center worked with both and loved it, but it was a job he never expected to have and one for which he had no real background. After retiring he left Savannah, a city said by many to be the most beautiful in North America, the place where he had been born and raised and spent his whole working life and had many life-long friends. He and his wife moved to Northern Ireland a country with which he had no connection, one he had never even visited and one in which he was afraid to say or do anything as it was still immersed in the "Troubles". One might think that this was the end of this journey, One might... and be wrong. As soon as he had become both comfortable and settled in his new situation and enjoying life in the "North", the decision was made to move south to the Republic, a country that the author knew only through the huge annual St. Patrick's Day celebrations in Savannah. There he became involved in a variety of new and unexpected activities which included authoring three books and writing the scripts for and performing in several highly acclaimed musical shows. Most importantly, in mid life he acquired a wonderful family with whom he has shared much of this journey. Stealing Stones is about a career and indeed a life that has been totally serendipitous.

It would be difficult for a child in America today to identify with the life of someone of the same age growing up during and just after World War II. Those were different times; some would say simpler times. Simpler? Maybe...in some ways. They were definitely exciting times for those of us who as children experienced them. The whole world was at war and yet there were no imbedded reporters and camera people who brought the horror of it all into our living rooms each night. There were reporters who did their best to bring us the details on the radio, in the newspapers and the news reels at the movies, but it all came out somewhat sanitized in black and white. Rarely were photos of dead bodies shown and without color, blood on a soldier looked more like dirt. So unless a family member or close family friend was killed or wounded, we were in effect insulated from the real tragedy of war. Our imaginations weren't insulated and we played at war, sometimes with toy soldiers, but often acting out battles ourselves with toy guns. Unlike games of cowboys and Indians where there was always somebody who wanted to be an Indian, nobody wanted to be a German or a Japanese. Even the war related activities like rationing, blackouts and scrap drives, which were problems for our parents, were part of the excitement for us. But it wasn't just the war that made those times different. There was no television, no computers and all that they have generated, no computer games, no Wii, no Ipods, Blackberries or any other hand held methods of communicating or entertaining ourselves. We did aspire to one day have a Dick Tracy two-way wrist radio, but contented ourselves with a secret decoder ring from a box of Wheaties. There were exciting toys that could be purchased, but we made many of our toys and constructed secret hideouts in our back yards and nearby parks. And we played ball; baseball, football and basketball...every free minute...and we played them in season. We'd have never played football during baseball season. With no television, it was the radio, the movies and comic books. With the mysteries, adventure stories and comedies on radio we saw with our imaginations and no movie or television set designer has ever been able to compete with a child's imagination. There was also the regional distinction...growing up in the Deep South with all of the customs and morays that that entailed. A lot of what we as children did in Savannah, Georgia was similar to what was going on in other parts of the country, but there were differences. We didn't play ice hockey, we didn't eat fish for breakfast and children in other areas didn't eat grits. Maybe the biggest difference was that the friends that I played with, listened to the radio with, went to school with were white, not just by custom, but by law. We probably played similar games, pulled for the same teams and listened to a lot of the same music as African-American children, but we never did any of those things together. That's a shame, but in the 1940s it was a fact of life in the South. Children of each generation probably think that they are living in the best of times. I am no different. Looking back so many years, it's easy to remember just the good times, but for me the 1940s and early 50s were the best years and The House on Gaston was, for the author, the most wonderful place to experience them.

During World War II eighty-eight of the almost three thousand Liberty ships built in America were launched in Savannah, Georgia. Without Liberty ships, the Battle of the Atlantic might have been lost.