This seminar presents a look at already published obituaries and how lives were celebrated with the written word.  We’ll explore how people used humor or a quirky habit or an attention grabbing line in their life stories.  What are some features of an obituary that grabs your attention?   Given a snippet of an obituary of a famous person, could you name that person? We know that you are just dying to get in this class.

In this 2-part seminar, the instructor will share his experience planning, orchestrating, and pulling off a very successful family reunion, a four-day set of events honoring his ancestor’s journeys and their personal sacrifices coming to America to make a better life ‘fur die Kinder’.  We’ll describe how you can create a similar weekend of celebration, commemoration, collaboration, chowing down, and chuckling.  The approach can be used as the template for your get-together - there is no need for previous experience, only bring your enthusiasm, imagination…and the unique knowledge of your family’s journey.  You’re sure to be motivated to jumpstart the creative process for organizing your next extended family reunion!

We'll also share interesting experiences about seemingly random coincidences in meeting people with information about his family, or insights he’s uncovered seemingly by happenstance in the course of his decades of research, and what you can do to 'create your coincidences' to advance your knowledge of your family's story.

The seminar will focus on lesser-known Dayton inventors.  For example, Vincent G. Apple has 745 patents credited to his name.  Charles Francis Jenkins had 400 patents, and Thomas Midgley, Jr., was granted over 100 patents over his career.  In addition to these individuals, many more ingenious inventions that came out of Dayton.  The course will also refer to Dayton's more famous inventors.

Travel virtually to the Eternal City and discover its archaeological wonders. Our tour begins on the Palatine Hill where we’ll uncover evidence supporting its mythical creation. We’ll trace the first kings as they established foundations and constructed the Forum. During the Republic, elite patricians vied for power resulting in an expansion of temples, theaters, and public works. Civil unrest produced a new emperor who transformed a city of brick into one of marble. This class will prepare you to visit Rome and witness its legacy from the bedrock up.

A century ago, aircraft designer Jack Northrop began dreaming of an all-wing aircraft, a pure wing unencumbered by traditional fuselage and tail. Many thought his designs were too radical, and his giant Flying Wing bombers were canceled and then destroyed following World War II. In this one-night Zoom seminar, you’ll learn the truth about why Northrop’s flying wings were canceled, and how they came to be reborn in the form of today’s stealth bombers, the B-2 and B-21. The moderator, Dr. Bud Baker, has spent the last 45 years studying and working with Flying Wings, including his 5-year stint as an Air Force program manager for the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.

At the beginning of the automobile era in America marketing and advertising focused on the need to convince consumers that these new-fangled conveyances were roadworthy. Print advertisements mostly emphasized the mechanicals of the motorcar as well as its  reliability. By the 1930s, particularly with the rise of General Motors and the ethos of planned obsolescence, keeping the customer wanting “the next new thing” was being aggressively pushed by marketing executives. Indeed, two of the most important individuals in the early marketing of the automobile had Dayton connections: Ned Jordan and Richard Grant and we’ll speak to their contributions. Within the advertising field its long been a given that consumerist behavior is highly influenced by desires for personal identification and social status. As such most automobile marketing over time has focused on cars as desirable objects but with important subthemes related to the family unit, class status, the desire for travel, economic success and upward mobility, celebrity, feminism, and sexuality. In this seminar we’ll illustrate all of these themes through the viewing of actual print and motion picture marketing placements.

Calvary Cemetery is one of the most peaceful and scenic sites in the Miami Valley, overlooking the Miami River, Carillon Park, and the Dayton skyline. This seminar will explore the history of St. Henry and Calvary Cemetery through a 50-minute chapel presentation followed by an approximately one-hour walking tour. Participants will learn about the people, stories, and setting that make this site an important part of Dayton’s history.

During World War II, the small town of North Platte, Nebraska, became the site of an extraordinary act of hospitality. Over four years, local volunteers welcomed and fed millions of traveling soldiers at a Union Pacific depot, often working up to 20 hours a day. This seminar will tell the inspiring story of the North Platte Canteen and the community spirit that helped sustain service members far from home.