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Stephen Ambrose
Biographer and Historian
I started off at the University of Wisconsin as a pre-med, wanting to follow in my father's footsteps. The idea was I'd take up his practice in this little town, and at the second semester of my sophomore year, I was required to take a course in American history, which I didn't want to do. I wanted to get on with physics and chemistry, and get into medical school. But the university required me to take it. I sat down in a big lecture course -- 300 students -- and Mr. Hesseltine began to lecture. He was talking about George Washington. The course was called "Representative Americans." It was biographies. He hadn't been going 10 minutes and my life had changed. I went up to him at the end of the lecture and said, "I want to do what you do for a living. How do I do that?" He laughed and he said, "Well, to start with, you'd better major in history." I went to the registrar that afternoon and changed my major, and never looked back.
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Stephen Ambrose
Biographer and Historian
I went down to the State Historical (Society) and got to work on a man named Charles Billinghurst, who was a one-term congressman from Wisconsin, just before the Civil War. And I'll never forget the feeling I had when I finished that work, and, and wrote the 10 page bio of this guy: "I know more about Charles A. Billinghurst than anybody else in the world!" I just thought that was marvelous. Now what I soon learned was, the reason for that was that nobody else cared about Charles A. Billinghurst. And then what I learned after that was, "But I can make 'em care if I tell the story right." And that's how I got into history.
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Stephen Ambrose
Biographer and Historian
Stephen Ambrose: Curiosity is essential. You've got to have a burning curiosity to find out, "How did Lewis and Clark do that?" To find out "How is it that Dick Nixon impressed these guys that I know are good, honest, substantial, contributing people. I'm curious. How did -- what was there about -- that they saw in Nixon, or that Nixon did? With Eisenhower, curiosity about of the whole of his life, and "How did he rise from rural poverty, and West Point, and on to D Day, and how did he do it?" and so on. You've got to be driven by curiosity. If you don't have that curiosity, find another way to make a living, you're never going to make it as a writer. Because if you're curious, and then you find the answer, then you want to share it, and you want to tell that story, and you want to say to the world, "Listen, come, come here, sit down around this campfire. I want to tell you a story. I want to tell you about this kid from Whittier, California who is about as obnoxious a kid as you'd ever imagine, that nobody wanted to be around. Nobody. And he went on to be President of the United States, winning two elections -- how did he do that? And I'm going to tell you how he did it." If you don't have the curiosity, you're not going to be able to do it that way.
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Julie Andrews
Legend of Stage and Screen
I also loved to scribble as a kid. I loved to write and eventually, because I didn't have a formal education, a governess was found for me who traveled with me wherever I went, because touring in vaudeville you're a week in one place, a week in another, and you could not settle into any school. So, I had this wonderful lady who traveled with me who quickly recognized that if she wanted me to do anything, all she had to do was say, "Do this first and then you may write your story," whatever story I was going to write because that was obviously what I loved to do most of all. She was a very gentle, very kind lady, and I loved her.
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