Oct. 7, 2008

Morningside College brown bag lunch focuses on Al McIntosh writings  

Newspaper columns written during Word War II by Alan C. McIntosh, former owner and editor of the Rock County Star Herald in Luverne, Minn., will be the focus of a brown bag lunch at noon on Wednesday, October 15, in the Hickman Dining Room located in the Olsen Student Center, 3609 Peters Avenue, on the Morningside College campus.

Art Moss, assistant professor of theatre at Morningside, will read out loud some of McIntosh’s wartime columns. The brown bag lunch is open to the public.

During World War II, McIntosh’s weekly column, “More or Less Personal Chaff,” chronicled the war’s impact for readers of the Rock County Star Herald. Filmmaker Ken Burns featured many of McIntosh’s columns in his 2007 PBS documentary “The War,” and actor Tom Hanks read the columns for the film. Burns has called McIntosh’s newspaper columns the single greatest archival discovery that he ever made.

The book “Selected Chaff: The Wartime Columns of Al McIntosh,” published in 2007, is a collection of McIntosh’s columns.

A 1922 graduate of Sioux City’s Central High School, McIntosh attended Morningside College for three years before enrolling at the University of Nebraska, where he received his degree in 1928. Morningside will present its 2008 Distinguished Alumni Award posthumously to McIntosh on October 15 at a private dinner prior to the 2008 Peter Waitt Lecture featuring Ken Burns. McIntosh’s daughter, Jean McIntosh Vickstrom of Bettendorf, Iowa, will accept the award.

McIntosh died in 1979 at the age of 73.