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;ory professor leaving
and defense. His ability helped the team reach the 1954 Rose Bowl, Mohs said. ?If he had been bigger, he would have gone pro and the world would have lost a great historian.?
Trip to N.O. swayed him
The world did lose a doctor, however. As a son of the only physician in Whitewater, Wis., a farming community of 5,000, Ambrose enrolled in school as a pre-med student with every intention of becoming a small-town doctor. But two events pushed him in a different direction: an encounter with scholar T. William Hesseltine and a whirlwind trip to New Orleans. ?Hesseltine said historians contribute to the world?s knowledge,? Ambrose said. ?You can?t do that as a small-town doctor. I changed my major within the week.?
As college seniors, Ambrose and Lamm hitchhiked one Christmas from Wisconsin, where it was 40 degrees below zero, to bright skies and Bourbon Street. ?We?d both grown up in the Midwest and that?s where Midwestern boys go,? Ambrose said. ?You can?t grow up in the Midwest without thinking about New Orleans. You get in a raft anywhere and you end up here. I?ve never lost my love for the city.?
Ambrose earned a master?s degree from Louisiana State Uni-versity and returned to Wisconsin for a doctorate. Then, in 1960, he took his first job, teaching history at what was then called LSUNO.
?We were not an elite school in any way at all,? he said. ?But we had an awfully good faculty because there were a lot of people who said, ?My God, I want to work in New Orleans.? ?
Four years later, fate came calling in the person of Dwight Eisenhower. The retired president wanted Ambrose to edit his personal papers. As a voracious student of military history, Eisenhower had read Ambrose?s book on Gen. Henry Halleck, Abraham Lincoln?s chief of staff. The general liked what he saw. *?1
don?t think 200 people in the whole world read that book,? Ambrose said. ?But it was that book that got me the opportunity of my life.?
Worked with Eisenhower
Ambrose resigned from UNO to take a job at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and work with Eisenhower.
He then taught at a number of schools, including the Naval War College, Temple University and Kansas State, before returning to New Orleans in 1970.
Ambrose began to write furiously on topics ranging from Crazy Horse and Custer to Lewis and Clark, Nixon and World War II.
The first books required countless trips to Montana, tramping over the Great Divide and following the Columbia River with his wife and children. The Ambroses camped, fished and hiked during the summers, eating and sleeping under the stars.
?We?d pack a big container of red beans, a big container of rice and a container of Luzianne and camp out all summer,? Moira said. ?I had a huge black kettle. The kids were so good. Those were the best years.?
Ambrose is writing another book on Meriwether Lewis, as well as a historical account of the Allied sweep through northwest Europe. He will draw from the research of more than a dozen summer forays to Normandy and beyond, including several tours he has organized for war veterans and World War II buffs.
In retirement, Ambrose plans to publish more war books, take an emeritus role at the D-Day museum and follow his curiosity wherever it leads ? at least until Powell makes his political ambitions known.
In the meantime, he will learn
Vonnegut at I UNO session j
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the end of .World War II in Europe, the University of New Orleans will have a two-day symposium May 7-8, featuring award-winning writers Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, CBS news correspondent Andy Rooney and historian Stephen Ambrose, among others.
The Battle of the Bulge, VE Day Conference will begin with Heller and Vonnegut discussing their wartime experiences in a session, ?World War II Revisited,? May 7 at 7:30 p.m. in the International Ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel. Ambrose will moderate.
The May 8 schedule will run from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. with Rooney speaking at lunch. Other guests include writer Martin Blu-menson and Gen. Andrew Goodpaster. For registration information, call the UNO Conference Services Department, 286-6680.
to do what he has never quite mastered: Ambrose will be patient. ?I?ve never been in this position before,? he said. ?What I do for the next year has everything to do with what someone else decides.?	1
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