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STAFF FILE PHOTO BY STEVEN FORSTER
Ambrose and wife Moira have been inseparable over the years. They danced together at the USO dance at the Marriott Hotel for the opening of the Pacific Wing of the D-Day Museum last year.
STAFF FILE PHOTO
Ambrose tracked the path of the Lewis and Ciark expedition in his bestseller, 'Undaunted Courage,? and often returned to Lewis and Clark?s old haunts. Here he straddles a stream at the headwaters of the Missouri River near the Lemhi Pass at the Continental Divide.
?The Supreme Commander:
The War Years of General Dwight 0. Eisenhower? ?Crazy Horse and Custer:
The Parallel Lives of Itoo American Warriors?
?Rise to Globallsm: American Foreign Policy Since 1938? ?Halleck: Lincoln?s Chief of Staff?
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He is a little unsteady as he climbs the stairs to the bright yellow office above the garage out back, the room where he has written most of his more than 25 books. He sucks on lozenges and sips coffee as he fields phone calls and conducts an interview. ?Come along with us,? he tells his daughter Stephenie, on a visit from her home in Montana. She has a book of her own on the Lewis and Clark expedition ? chronicled by her father in ?Undaunted Courage" ? coming out next year. ?Sit in. See how it?s done.?
Every now and then he stops to take a phone call, usually about personal business.
?Dying is so damn complicated,? he says, but he sounds irritated rather than self-pitying.
Despite being diagnosed with lung cancer last April, Ambrose, 66, has kept busy. Between rounds of chemotherapy and other medical treatments, he has completed ?The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation,? written with Douglas Brinkley, Ambrose?s successor as head of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans, with photographs by Sam Abell. He has put together a collection of essays, ?To America: Personal Reflections of a Historian,? due out in early November, and he has finished a draft of his first novel for young adults, about George Shannon, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
?When I got this diagnosis of lung cancer, with three to six months to live," Ambrose says, ?it got me to thinking of Ulysses S. Grant. He got a diagnosis of throat cancer and he was in great pain. He couldn?t even write; he was dictating at the end, and he wrote one of the best memoirs ever written by an American soldier. And (Dwight) Eisenhower, when he went into Walter Reed for his final few months, wrote a book called 'At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends.? And I thought, if it?s good enough for him it?s good enough for me.?
Suiting word to action, Ambrose set to work and completed the manuscript of ?To America,? composed of formal essays and informal personal reflections, in a record three months. But first to come out is an official publication of the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial, ?The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation From the Louisiana Purchase to Today? (National Geographic, $40).
?I had done the Missouri River with Sam,? Ambrose says, referring to ?Lewis and Clark: Voyage of Discovery,? his first book with the popular National Geographic photographer
?Dying Is so damn complicated.?
STEPHEN AMBROSE, on his battle with lung canoer
Sam Abell. ?So traveling with Sam on the river had a great appeal. I grew up on the Mississippi River ? both ends of it ? and it?s meant a lot to me, swimming and fishing and canoeing.? This time was a little different. ?Working with Doug (Brinkley), you get to do things you wouldn?t otherwise think of doing,? Ambrose says. ?He got Pat Taylor (of Taylor Energy) to loan us his helicopter for a day. So we were out there at the billionaires? airport and the driver, a Marine from Vietnam, said, ?You want these doors on or off?? And we said, ?You got safety belts? Take ?em off!? So we flew down to the mouth of the river and came back and stopped at various places. It was pretty much of a thrill.
?And this is the kind of thing Doug arranges ? he called in advance and arranged a dinner date with Chuck Berry? (in St. Louis).
At this point Stephenie leans forward and says, ?We were all like, ?Dad, do you know who Chuck Berry is?' ?
?And I didn?t,? Ambrose says a bit sheepishly. ?But I do now.
?And I?d driven through Memphis 217 times and never had the slightest impulse to stop and see Graceland. But we went
and it was so disgustingly kitsch, so America-in-the 1950s. The kid may have been a good musician, but he sure didn?t have any taste. And Doug made me pose with that big-ass picture of Elvis.? He shook his head.
But the boyish thrill of discovery hasn?t left him. ?I?d been to Hannibal (Mo.) before, but I hadn?t really explored it,? he says, ?and you get into that cave where Becky Thatcher got lost and whew!? ? he whistles ? ?it?s just exactly the way Twain described it.
?The river always surprises.?
Moira Ambrose, his wife of more than 30 years, comes in to say she?s leaving for a while, and they exchange a kiss. ?See you in a few hours," she tells him.
?Just come home,? he says. The bond between them is a presence in the room.
In ?To America,? Ambrose says, one of the essays is devoted to the changing roles of women, which, along with civil rights, is one of the sweeping changes in American life he has witnessed in his lifetime.
?When I was a kid growing up in Wisconsin, a woman?s place was housewife or clerk or telephone operator or teacher or librarian. And their majors were home ec, librarianship, and a lot of English. That?s the way things were,? he says. ?From the time my brothers and I were old enough, my mother started talking about wanting to get a job, and my father would say, ?No doctor?s wife is going to take a job.? Finally she did get a job. And that was my background.?
When Ambrose married first wife Judy Dorlester she was, he says, ?a Rhodes scholar equivalent. But I put her to work immediately ? somebody had to put me through graduate school. And then she died, and then I met and married Moira. And that?s really the heart of the story.
?She had three kids and I had two, and she was a newspaperwoman, but she had quit the newspaper job to full-time raise kids, and she was very good at it. But in the late ?60s, she came
home from a consciousness-rais-ing meeting and really read me the riot act. So I started thinking about it. . . . And I said, ?Moira, Judy put me through graduate school and I owe. So I?ll do the dishes, I?ll make the meals, I?ll do the shopping. I draw the line at making the beds, but I?ll do everything else.? And for two years I did while she got her master?s degree in English. I got so I knew that Schwegmann?s on Chef Menteur so well I could probably still tell you where the butter and the peanut butter were.?
?And the spaghetti sauce, Dad,? Stephenie says. ?And I seem to remember a lot of red beans and rice.?
?To America? also includes an essay on the National D-Day Museum, the founding of which ranks as one of Ambrose?s greatest achievements.
?I could probably write one hell of a book about how to build a museum,? he says. ?But I never will. It took a long time, there were times when it looked like the whole board was going to quit. But I never gave up. And the reason I never gave up was because I?d been reading about what happened at the time of the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. They had a big-ass reunion, both sides camping out ? can?t you see those old gray beards? ? and it was a very big event.
?And I knew that the 50th anniversary of D-Day was going to be the same kind of thing. When that crowd came out" ? he stops to whistle ? ?New Orleans is a city that loves its parades, but this time
?Usually the contact is between the riders and the crowds and the interaction is ?Throw me something, mister? and they throw out those cheap-ass beads. But to see all those people holding up signs that say ?Thank you? ? that was the
Ambrose downplays his role as a catalyst for the way America has come to think of those war veterans now commonly called ?the greatest generation.? But he was among the
first to listen and collect their oral histories, at the Eisenhower Center. ?I was a participant in a process, that?s all,? he says.
?One of the best things is going to the museum with him,? Stephenie says, ?and seeing people recognize him and come up and shake his hand and say thank you.?
Not that Ambrose?s audience is composed solely of admirers. The 2001 publication of his book ?The Wild Blue? brought charges of plagiarism earlier this year, as well as widespread academic and popular criticism of other works.
?I?ve had to face these charges of plagiarism," he says. ?One whole Sunday ?Doones-bury? was about me. The back of an issue of Time magazine was an attack on me. And I?d always map out a response, but Hugh (Ambrose?s son) would always say, ?You?ve got to let Alice (Alice Mayhew, Ambrose?s longtime editor at Simon & Schuster) see this.? And Alice would always say no.
?So I lived through all that. Those charges of plagiarism were as ridiculous to me as the other side of the coin. For all the
?I could probably write one hell of a book about how to build a museum. But I never will.?
AMBROSE on his struggles to build the D-Day Museum
people who would call me a plagiarist, there are all those other people who say ?he?s the foremost historian in America,? ?America?s historian,? ?the voice of America.? ?
?Icon,? Stephenie interjects wryly.
?Yeah, icon,? Ambrose says. ?It was just as ridiculous as the plagiarism stuff. George McGovern said that I?m the greatest man he?s ever known. And I said, ?Let?s not get carried away here.?
?So I lived through that. And-Alice was right. But I wrote:, some great letters.?	?	,u
?The loyalty was incredible,?^ Stephenie says. ?I?d be out,; walking the dog and somebody,., would come up to me and say, ^ ?You tell your dad that he?s the7; reason we read history and I ? will always read what he writes.? ?
People not only read what he writes, they do what he does. Spurred on by Ambrose?s books, many people have visited the battlefields of Europe and struck out in the footsteps of Lewis and Clark.
?The best response is the number of people who buy it (?Undaunted Courage?) and the royalty checks that come in. The next best response is the. people who write and say, ?I? read your book and I took the " family out on the trail.? That? means a lot.
?That?s the great thing about America, from sea to shining ? sea,? Ambrose says. And he?s -seen most of it.	*
?Where I feel most at home ? in America is ? in America.:; Where I?ve lived for the longest.: time is right here. And I?ve had-to think about where I want to,, be buried and I?m going to do it right here ? a block and a half ^ from where we?re sitting right ? now.?
?Plus,? he adds, ?you get to be buried in the ground here." ?
But more immediate plans are on his mind. He is sched-" uled for two ?Tbday? show ap-" pearances for the forthcoming ~ books. Then there?s a two-week" cruise through the Panama " Canal on his calendar.
?My grandfather was in the ^ Corps of Engineers for five years. I?ve never been through" the canal and like everybody j else in the world, I?d love to do : it. And now I?ve got the excuse," he says. ?I?ve got more money than I know what to do with, my ; brothers are both retired, and : my older and younger brothers and their wives and Moira and I are going off to look for Grandpa."
Book editor Susan Larson can be reached at slarson (ftlmssploayune.com or at (604) 826-3467.	;