About the Author
Janice Sweet McElhoe, Ph.D.
The big cannon fired and the sound reverberated from nearby Tussey Mountain while the sulfurous smell of battle floated over the grassy cemetery and lingered in the early evening. Young men, 15, 16 and 17 joined older men to reenact the part played by Company G of the 148th Pennsylvania Volunteers in the American Civil War. The boom of the cannon and the haze of gray smoke that drifted across the cemetery jogged my memory of stories I had read; visions of the brave young classmates at the Boalsburg Academy, who put away their school books and marched off to war. I remembered, also, the schoolgirls left behind. I wondered how this poignant story had stayed so obscure and I wanted to share it. This was the day that I made the decision to write the story for young readers.
Boalsburg remains a quiet village situated at the foot of Tussey Mountain. As a child I walked the same paths and stood at the same places where events had changed the lives of the characters in my story. My friends lived in the same house where Emma Hunter had grown up. We made the evergreen sprays at the former home of Sophie and Daniel Keller and placed evergreen sprays in the same cemetery where Emma and Sophie first laid flowers in memory of Emma’s father and classmates who had died in the Civil War. I enjoyed the same autumn colors and picked goldenrod and asters. Our lives were in some way interwoven. However, time moves on and as a young adult I went off to college, began teaching children in other towns and places and raised three daughters. Eventually, I pursued a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Curriculum and Instruction at the Pennsylvania State University. Upon graduation I began teaching at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Later I taught at Temple University. My favorite class to teach was Children’s Literature. I loved children’s books; the stories and the illustrations. I also loved to go home to Boalsburg. It seemed inevitable that I would want to share the story of the birth of Memorial Day.
Publications
1999 The New Advocate, Images of Grandparents in Children's Literature, Volume 12, Number 3 (summer 1999). 1998 Grove Printing, A History of the Boalsburg Heritage Museum: Sarah's Story, Released October 11, 1998. 1994 The Pennsylvania State University - Doctoral dissertation - Compensatory Education: Comparison of the Design and Intent of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act: 1965 to 1994. 2008 Crandall Publishing, Shadows of War: Prelude to the First Memorial Day, September 8, 2008. 2008 Grove Printing, A History of the Boalsburg Heritage Museum: Sarah’s Story, 2nd Edition, Released October 11, 2008.
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