Vol. 17, No. 18	Feb. 5, 1998

Winston Churchill is focus of first Land and Sea talk

The University 's 13th annual Land and Sea Lecture Series opens Friday, Feb. 6, with a talk by Raymond Callahan, associate dean of the College of Arts and Science.

Callahan will discuss "Why Remember Churchill?" at 10 a.m. in the Virden Center, 700 Pilottown Rd., Lewes, and again at 2 p.m. in the Methodist Manor House, 100 Middleford Road, Seaford.

Should Winston Churchill, dead for a generation, be remembered as a colorful champion of a dying empire, the master of a florid and now defunct oratorical style or as the grandfather of modern "covert action" agencies? Callahan asserts that he is all three and more-the very embodiment of the proposition that history is made by people.

On Friday, Feb. 13, the series continues with a talk on Thomas Garrett, a Delawarean who helped thousands of slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad.

Speaking will be Scott F. Mason, assistant director of the Trabant University Center. Mason has researched Garrett's life for an upcoming play, Delaware's Railroad to Freedom, a musical production commissioned by the Delaware Humanities Forum that will be presented throughout the state in February and March and in public schools this spring.

Garrett was a Quaker iron merchant in Wilmington, and from 1820 to the Civil War, he helped thousands of slaves to freedom. For slaves fleeing north through the Delmarva Peninsula, his Wilmington home was the last Underground Railroad station before freedom. He was the model for the character Simeon Halliday in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Other talks in the lecture series, designed to bring engaging UD speakers to southern Delaware, include "Delaware on The Brink of a New Millennium: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?" by Edward C. Ratledge, director of the Center for Applied Demography and Survey Research, and "The Jury Under Attack" by Valerie P. Hans, professor of criminal justice and psychology.

The series is sponsored by the Office of Alumni and University Relations.

For more information, call 855-1620.