“Tell Mother Not to Worry”: Soldier Stories From Gettysburg’s George Spangler Farm
2025 Bachelder-Coddington Distinguished Book Award-winning author Ron Kirkwood spent nine years researching the George Spangler farm in Gettysburg and has written two books on it: “Too Much for Human Endurance”: The George Spangler Farm Hospitals and the Battle of Gettysburg, which was published in 2019, and the sequel “Tell Mother Not to Worry”: Soldier Stories From Gettysburg’s George Spangler Farm in 2024.
In his return to the Allentown area for this presentation on “Tell Mother Not to Worry,” Kirkwood will reveal more previously untold events and focuses not just on the soldiers and surgeons at the two major hospitals at Spangler but also on how a wound or death there impacted families back home for the rest of their lives. He also has more stories in the book and this presentation of soldiers from the 153rd Pennsylvania and will discuss the critical importance in the battle of Powers Hill, most of which was owned by George Spangler.
Ron Kirkwood retired after a 40-year career in newspapers and magazines including USA TODAY, Baltimore Sun, Harrisburg (PA) Patriot-News, York (PA) Daily Record and Midland (Mich.) Daily News. Ron edited national magazines for USA TODAY Sports, was NFL editor for USA TODAY Sports Weekly and managed the Harrisburg copy desk when the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012.
He is a Michigan native and a graduate of Central Michigan University, where he has returned as guest speaker to journalism classes as part of the school’s Hearst Visiting Professionals series. Ron and his wife of 49 years, Barbara, live near their grandkids in the deer-filled countryside outside of Pittsburgh.