I first met T. Harry Williams when I was 5 years old back in 1963; my father who worked on A/C & heating got a call to work T.H.'s a/c. While my father worked on the a/c I played with the cannon ball from the battle of Baton Rouge that T.H. had in his front yard at that time. T.H. and my father came outside to find me rolling the cannon on the front lawn. T.H. ask me if I wanted the cannon ball and I said yes! T.H. then tells me if you can load it in your fathers truck you can have it, boy did I try to get it in that truck.

I didn't go to LSU only because T.H. retired the year I finished high school.

Years and years later around 2004/5 I'm standing in line at books a million up here in Monroe, and there are two persons behind me in line. Both having a book on the civil war, they get to talking to one another and T.H.'s name comes up (my ears perk up hearing the name.) The second person behind me is telling the first now much he liked T.H.'s books; when the person behind me starts cutting T.H. up saying T.H. was all wrong in his writings and know little of the real war etc..

Ok enough that got me on fire...

So I turn around (little did the first person behind me know) and start off by asking the first person behind me his job; believe it or not he was a history teacher at a college up here in north Louisiana (no not Dr. Jones or Terry Jones the other college).

Humm nice and then I asked him what did T.H. get wrong etc...he does a few facts and gives a few opinions....

So I quickly attacked on all front defending T.H. and go very deep into letters writen by soldiers, I flank him with stats, the said history teacher found out very quick that he didn't know the Civil War as well as he thought and beat a retreat after admitting that he had not read that much on the war, and as I told him as I walked away T.H. knew far more than I will every know on the war; I'm just a student of the war, T.H. is the father of many of us.

I hope these small stories help some understand how beloved T.H. is to many of us here in Louisiana and I was very proud to come to his defense that day in Book a Millions.